


I Could Never See Tomorrow

by MooseFeels



Series: the sun from shining [2]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alpha Katsuki Yuuri, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Body Image, M/M, Mpreg, Omega Victor Nikiforov, body stuff, canon typical fatphobia, changes, discomfort in own skin?, more tags to come
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-21
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-01-01 04:35:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 19,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12148731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MooseFeels/pseuds/MooseFeels
Summary: It's not a easy pregnancy, by any stretch of the imagination.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> And a Very Happy Birthday to Dearest mildsweet, greatest of friends, finest of editors/betas, and all around a really stand-up dude.

Viktor kneels in front of the toilet in Barcelona and he breathes through his nose and he wills his stomach to calm down, to hold the meal, to keep it together for  _ just _ this once. 

Viktor knows it’s different for everyone, and it’s probably exacerbated by a million factors. By the stress of traveling, by the stress of the competitive season, by the stress of the fact that despite  _ everything _ he and Yuuri aren’t quite regularly sharing a bed still. Viktor knows that his internal clock can’t figure out when morning is, so instead of morning sickness, he has all-the-time-sickness. But, still. 

Viktor feels the press of the small tile in the hotel bathroom on his knees and he breathes, in and out, and he tries to at least keep his vomiting  _ quiet _ if not non-existent. The sound of the running shower does a fair amount to hide it, he thinks 

Yuuri would worry. And Viktor hates the idea of Yuuri worrying. 

Yuuri already worries so much. And he has the  _ final _ tomorrow. The final final. A pretty good shot at taking gold tomorrow. 

Viktor glances over at the ring on his finger and he feels warmth wash over him that has nothing to do with the steam from the shower or the nausea that comes in waves. 

It’s one thing to smell like Yuuri, in the streets and in the airport. It’s another for both of them to wear a signal like this. A confirmation that it’s not a one-night-stand or a casual fling. A signal of how wonderfully  _ serious _ this is between them. 

Viktor wipes his mouth delicately with a square of toilet tissue. He stands up and flushes the toilet and eases into the shower, resting his hand on the fluttering feeling inside his belly. The fluttering feeling that he knows is psychosomatic but that he can’t help but think of as his baby. 

As  _ their _ baby. 

Viktor thinks about the sound of the choir in the night, behind him. He thinks about the golden streetlamps throwing light onto Yuuri’s beautiful features. About his smile, about his hand wrapped in his. 

Viktor showers and wraps himself up in the plush hotel room robe. He steps out of the bathroom and into their hotel room, where Yuuri is sitting on a bed, his hands resting on his knees, his posture straight and tall. 

The smell of him is different. It takes that texture of barely contained anxiety; the smell that isn’t quite floral but is something else, ashy-lye-bitterness tickling the back of his throat. It’s a smell that always seems to haunt him, but it hasn’t been this bad in  _ months _ .  Viktor fights ducking back into the bathroom and sits down on the bed opposite Yuuri. 

He looks at him, at his brown eyes and beautiful, round features, and he says, “My Yuuri, you wanted to talk?”

Yuuri takes a deep breath, and he says, “I think after...tomorrow, we should end this.”

The statement hits Viktor like lightning, and then there’s  _ nothingness _ in its wake like he’s been hollowed out. 

“I--what?” Viktor asks. 

Yuuri’s posture shifts. He looks down, hiding behind his glasses. Yuuri who will hide even as he decides to break Viktor’s heart. 

“You’ve done so much for me,” Yuuri says. “More than I could ask for. And because of that-- because of  _ you _ \-- I could give  _ everything _ to my last season.”

Yuuri bows. Viktor watches him, and he feels detached from his body. He feels like he’s observing this from outside of himself. It’s a dizzy sort of feeling. Viktor hates it. 

“Thank you, Viktor,” Yuuri says, and his voice has gone quiet and strange. 

“I didn’t expect you to be so selfish,” he says. 

At once, he wishes he could take it back and he also knows it was the only thing he could say. 

Yuuri’s breath catches. 

“I made this...selfish choice on my own,” Yuuri says. “I’m retiring.”   
_ It’s not just you, you fool,  _ Viktor thinks. 

And then he looks up at him and his hand drifts forward to pull Viktor’s bangs out of his eyes. 

“What are you doing?” Viktor spits at him. 

Yuuri’s eyes are focused but not present. Observing but not  _ here _ . Viktor knows what this look means; he knows because he’s spent the past year living with him and learning him, learning to speak his language and read his body and signals. 

“I didn’t-- I didn’t expect you to cry,” Yuuri says.

Viktor shifts, to catch his eyes. 

“I’m  _ angry _ , okay?” Viktor says. 

“You said you would coach me through the Grand Prix Final,” Yuuri said. “It was your timeline.”   
“I thought--” Viktor looks for it, for the way Yuuri is hiding this conversation. “I thought you needed my help more,” he says.  _ I thought you needed me.  _

“Aren’t you going to have a comeback?” Yuuri asks. “You don’t have to worry about me--”   
“Why would I come back to the ice when you’re retiring?” Viktor demands. Furious. “What would be the  _ point _ ?”

Yuuri looks at him, deer in the headlights. 

Yuuri swallows.

The hair smells like fire.

“I got another room,” he says. “I’ll-- I’ll see you tomorrow.”

And Yuuri stands and he slips away, and Viktor, coward he is, he lets him. 

The door closes. 

Viktor doesn’t sleep. Once the burnt smell dissipates, he spends an hour in the bathroom fighting his nervous stomach and four hours trying to calm down and one last hour getting dressed before he slips out into the city for a walk. 

The city sleeps. Dawn begins, grey December fingers filtering through. Coffee shops begin to open. Office workers sleepily flock to them. 

Viktor stands beside the sea. Cold sea air rushing around him, chapping his features. Numbing. 

It feels like St. Petersburg a little. Warmer, but still wonderfully salty and cold. 

“Shouldn’t you be shacked up with that idiot?” someone asks, and Viktor turns and Yurio is standing behind him, wearing an oversized hoodie with the hood up, his hands in the pockets.

_ I should _ , Viktor thinks.

He shrugs instead. 

Yurio doesn’t seem to take the hint though, and he presses on. “Is he ready for me to make quick work of him? Wipe him off the ice?”

“Yuri, please,” Viktor says. He can feel a headache starting behind his eyes already. 

“What, is being his emotional babysitter exhausting?” He asks. “Don’t act like we can’t see that.”

“Yuri,  _ please _ ,” Viktor says, turning to him. “Please, not right now.”

“What do you  _ see _ in him?” He roars, suddenly going from just competitive to angry. 

“Why do you care?” Viktor demands. “It’s our relationship, it’s our lives, it’s our--”

And Viktor can’t finish that sentence. The words get caught in his throat, get stuck there and refuse to tumble out. His hand rests over his belly, pressing there.

Yuri’s steely eyes flick from Viktor’s face to his hand and back. 

His expression shifts; just as intense but  _ different. _

“There’s a  _ baby _ ?” He asks. 

Wonder caught in the syllables of his voice. 

“Maybe,” Viktor says. 

If Yuuri doesn’t want him around, Viktor won’t raise the kid on his own. He’s not sure he could. He could talk to someone. He’s sure Mila or Chris would know where he could get an abortion. 

Yurio looks at Viktor and he says, “You haven’t told him, have you?”   
Viktor shakes his head. “I didn’t want to And then we had this-- we had a  _ fight _ and now--”   
And Viktor’s crying,  _ again _ . Weak, stupid, Viktor, falling too hard and too fast for an alpha who doesn’t want him back. 

“Oh, no, Viktor,” Yuri says, reaching out to lay a hand on Viktor’s shoulder. 

Viktor pulls away and buries his head in his hands. Takes a deep, shuddering breath. “He wants to retire. Because he thinks I want to be back on the ice.”

After a long moment, Yuri says, “Well, do you?”

“Fuck, I don’t know,” Viktor says. When he pulls his hands away, his face is cold on the salt air. “But he said that it was better that we ended this so that I could come back and he could retire and now I  _ can’t _ and I don’t--” Viktor takes a deep breath. 

He lets it go. 

Yuri looks at him. “I have diplomatic immunity,” he says. “My mother is an ambassador. I could kill him.”

“Don’t say that, Yuri, my god,” Viktor comments. “I just don’t want him to...how do I get him to stay?”

Yurio looks at him. 

“You have to talk to each other,” he says. “If you love him--” And at this, he rolls his eyes, theatrically. “If you love him, I don’t think he  _ could _ leave you. And if he doesn’t love you,” Yuri shrugs, “I have diplomatic immunity.”

Viktor sighs. Takes a deep breath in. 

“Yuri, what if he leaves me,” Viktor says, and he feels awful. Every terrible, whining, clinging thing he’s ever been afraid to be, here on the street, crying in front of a  _ child _ . 

“Then I’ll kill him, and eventually, you’ll be okay,” Yuri says. “No matter what happens, you’ll be okay.”

Yuri’s voice in’t quite comforting, but it is steady. Unwavering and serious.

Viktor takes a deep breath of salty sea air. He nods. 

“Okay,” he says. He takes another breath. “I guess I have to go be a coach and then have this crisis.”

Yuri levels him with a clean, calm stare. “I won’t go easy on him,” Yuri says. 

“He would hate if you did,” Viktor answers. 

Yuri nods, grimly, and he continues on his way. 

Viktor watches him go before he heads back to the hotel. 

Yuuri’s skating today. He’ll let him skate, and then Viktor’ll fall apart. 


	2. Chapter 2

Yuuri wakes up and he feels bad. He hops in the shower and feels bad and he gets dressed and he feels bad and he chokes down a container of yogurt and a banana and he feels bad. Yuuri leaves the hotel and goes to the rink, and he feels bad. He stretches and takes his short practice on the ice and he feels bad, spending more time than he should on just getting feeling into himself and not focusing nearly as much as he should on making sure his elements are perfect and his routine is going to be any good. Yuuri forgets how he just feels  _ better _ when Viktor is there, beside him. With him. And it’s not like a pain; it’s like a filter on the world. It’s like he’s more sensitive, more delicate, and it’s like everything is greyer. Colder. 

Yuuri approaches the gates off the ice and Viktor is there. He looks well dressed and stoic. Serious and severe. 

“We’ll talk about it after the performance,” he says. “Okay? Focus on the skate now.”

Yuuri looks at him. He instantly hates the distance he put between them. 

Yuuri nods. 

Viktor nods back. They drift off the ice to the backstage area, and they dodge reporters and they wait. 

Yuuri stretches, absently. 

Yuuri detachedly watches JJ melt down on the ice, and he watches Phichit soar higher than he ever has before. Viktor watches them with that same, wistful intensity he had yesterday. That  _ longing  _ that made Yuuri realize that he’s done the thing that scared him the most. 

It’s not that he took Viktor away from the world, it’s that he’s keeping him here when he so deeply wants to be back. 

And Yuuri loves Viktor so deeply-- in his blood and teeth and veins and skin-- that the thought that he could make him so unhappy is unacceptable. 

So this will hurt; it will hurt Yuuri so badly, and it will hurt Viktor for a little while, but it will pass. And Viktor will be happier. 

And Yuuri believes it’s true. He believes it seeing Phichit step onto the ice and skating the best Yuuri’s ever seen him (Yuuri burns with pride for both his best friend and Celestino). 

He believes it walking to the stands, standing under them and stretching.

And Yuuri believes it stepping through the curtain and then--

He’s stretching and Vitya-- Viktor lays his hand over his and says, “Yuuri, do not worry about gold. Skate your best.” 

Yuuri can feel the lack of the possessive in front of his own name like a lead weight. 

Yuuri feels his touch on his hand and that animal thing inside himself whines with the need to reciprocate, to apologize, and to bask in Viktor’s grace. 

“Believe in yourself,” Viktor says. 

Yuuri looks at the ice. “Viktor,” he says. “I told you. I just wanted you to be yourself. Not some coach. Just you.” 

He turns his hand to grasp Viktor’s a little better. Tighter. 

It’s funny. Yuuri wants to end this but here they are, fools both, still wearing the rings. 

Viktor sighs in thought for a moment, before he says, “My Yuuri, I want you to listen. I took a break from the ice-- _ the five time world champion took a break from the ice--  _ to coach you. How is this that you still have not brought me a gold medal, hm?”

Yuuri looks up at him. At his clear, blue eyes, at once as intense as they ever could be and filled with a sadness that Yuuri hates himself for putting there. 

He’s close enough Yuuri can smell the winter pine and eucalyptus smell of him, along with a saltiness Yuuri presumes is from the sea air. 

“How much longer will you hide your potential, Yuuri?” He says, and he pulls Yuuri forward into an embrace. It surprises him but he’s not angry. The hold is a balm over never that have been fraying since they last talked, since Yuuri decided to make the right choice. The selfish choice that would keep Viktor from getting even more hurt. 

The right choice, right?

“I want to kiss that medal,” Viktor says. “Your gold medal.”

Not his coach. 

Just Viktor.

Himself.

Yuuri smiles, opens his mouth to say something when the announcer declares that it’s time. 

It’s time for him to take the ice. His last performance. 

He pulls away. Their fingers slip apart. Yuuri feels the tears on his face as the coldness from the ice. 

Yuuri takes a deep breath. 

Pulls himself into starting position and the music starts and Yuuri feels the skating like a bond connecting him over the ice to Viktor. He feels the ghost of his embrace on him as he stretches his arms out. Longing for him. For the connection he’s always felt; that’s always been there and that’s now real. 

Viktor, his coach. 

Viktor, his friend. 

Viktor, the love of his life. 

The love of his life. 

And he wants Yuuri to bring him a medal. A gold medal. 

Yuuri skates and he thinks about bringing home a medal for Viktor, for him to keep in their home and to display in their beautiful house that Yuuri will provide beautiful furniture for and endless food. 

Yuuri tries to quiet those thoughts. He loves Viktor, he loves him. He has to let him go. He has to. 

He’s spent more than half of his life watching him. Wanting to catch up. 

Wanting Viktor to see him and to chase him too. 

Yuuri skates, and he soars into his triple toe loop. Nails the quad sal. 

Yuuri skates because he’s Viktor’s, and he always has been. He skates because he couldn’t have gotten here without him; whether through this year or to the existence of his career at all. 

There’s no Yuuri without Vitya, and when Yuuri  _ soars _ into his quad flip, he makes sure that everyone knows that Viktor is on the ice  _ with  _ Yuuri. A part of him. 

He hopes Viktor know. Hopes he recognizes that it means that he really is  _ his _ Yuuri. 

He doesn’t touch the ice. He doesn’t flub the jumps.

He flies, and it’s perfect.

And he stretches his free hand outward to Viktor, and even without his glasses on, he knows Viktor sees him and looks at him and that he--

Well, that Viktor  _ has _ Yuuri. 

And as suddenly as it is, it’s too much. Yuuri’s program ends and he cries out, into the air and he realizes he’s crying, he’s crying because it’s so much and it’s  _ over _ . 

He skates to the kiss and cry and Viktor extends his arms outward and Yuuri steps back into his embrace. 

Where he belongs. 

And they wait for the scores to come in. 

It overwhelms him, suddenly, that maybe it wasn’t good enough. His ankle was sloppy out of a rotation and he could have done higher difficulty--

“Stop worrying,” Viktor says, his hand on his back. “The performance was nearly perfect.”

And as Viktor says it, the announcer starts to speak and--

He breaks the record.

He breaks Viktor’s record. 

And Yuuri can’t hear anything for a minute, the feeling is so profoundly strange. 

Viktor looks at him and he extends his hand. 

Yuuri looks at it, and at him, and he takes it and Viktor pulls him in close, to a tight embrace. Yuuri feels the bubbling of tears again; smells the pine and eucalyptus and something else, something unfamiliar but pleasant. 

“Oh,” Viktor sighs. “Oh, my Yuuri. As your coach, I am so pleased. That you took my record? This is the singular complement as your choreographer and coach.”

He pauses. There’s a weight to it. A beat before something more is said.

“Viktor,” Yuuri says, softly.

But someone ushers them away from the kiss and cry and then they’re watching Chris and reporters ask Yuuri questions and everything keeps happening and then Yurio is preparing to go out. 

“Wait, Yurio,” Yuuri says. 

Yurio assesses him cooly.

" _Ganbatte_ ," Yuuri says.

He steps away, onto the ice. 

And Yurio is flawless. Beautiful.

And with his previous program, just a  _ little _ bit better than Yuuri. 

Yuuri is filled with disbelief when he stands on the podium; he’s filled with something else when he feels the weight of the silver medal in his hand. 

Yuuri stands and looks out at the crowd, and Yurio turns to him, slightly to the side. 

“How does it feel?” He asks.

Yuuri looks at him. 

“You are a  _ dead _ man,” Yurio continues. “How does it feel?”

Yuuri can’t follow. He must frown or something. 

He looks back out at the crowd. 

“You  _ will not _ retire,” Yurio says. “And you will not hurt Viktor.”

Yuuri tries to piece it together. “Oh--okay?” He responds eventually. 

Yuuri comes off the ice and Viktor is waiting for him. Like he always is. 

Yuuri takes off his medal and he holds in front of himself. In front of Viktor. An offering, if he could find it worthy. 

“I know...I know it’s not gold,” Yuuri says, softly. Ashamed before his omega. 

“Oh, Yuuri, do you think I could kiss just any medal?” He asks. He steps into Yuuri’s space, pressing him against the wall. Yuuri lets him. “How tragic that I failed you so as your coach. Whatever could I do?”

And it’s too much. Yuuri takes him into his arms. His Viktor. And he holds him and Viktor holds him back. 

“Stay with me,” Yuuri says. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Please. Stay with me when you come back to skating. If you can. If you can skate competitively and be my coach.”   
Viktor sighs against his ear. Swallows-- Yuuri can hear the bob of his adam's’ apple in his throat-- and he says, “My Yuuri, I promised I would coach you until you retired. But I must tell you, my Yuuri, I should not skate competitively next year, for you see, I am pregnant.”


	3. Chapter 3

Viktor says it, finally, after weeks of waiting. 

Yuuri freezes in his arms. He pulls away to look him in the eye, his brown eyes wide and wavering with tears. 

He says something in Japanese, something Viktor can’t quite catch, and then he pulls him in close. Holds him. 

After a long moment, he says softly, “You weren’t going to tell me, were you?”

Viktor lets out a sound that isn’t a laugh, but it might sound like one to someone who doesn’t know him very well. 

Yuuri’s hold on him strengthens. He knows Viktor better than anybody. 

“Viktor,” he sighs, sounding absolutely devastated. “We have to talk about this.”

“I know,” he says, and it’s true. They do. “Before, or after the banquet?”   
“Before,” Yuuri says. “Please.”

And they filter through the receiving line of sponsors and journalists and answer quick questions and eventually get to a cab that gets them to the hotel and maybe ninety minutes later, it’s just Viktor and just Yuuri in the hotel room, together.

They haven't said anything meaningful to each other since. The paused conversation is so much more important. 

Yuuri looks exhausted. Competition always leaves him more worn than practice; something about the energy of talking to everyone and the weight of everyone’s eyes leaves him wrung out. Bags are under his eyes and there’s a shiver to his movements, a stuttering shake. 

He sits down on the bed. Unzips his jacket slowly. 

He’s still wearing his costume underneath. Of course he is. 

Viktor swallows. “Who dressed you?” He asks. There’s a long zipper up the back that he can’t reach himself. 

“Phichit,” Yuuri says. “The extra room-- it was right next to his.”

Viktor sits down on the other bed, opposite Yuuri. They face each other. 

Yuuri’s hands trace constantly over the shape and texture of the silver medal. Can’t stop fiddling with it. Yuuri looks at the carpet, absently, instead of looking at Viktor.

“You didn’t-- you weren’t going to  _ tell _ me,” Yuuri says. Yuuri repeats. 

Viktor nods. “I could not chain you to what you did not want,” Viktor says.  _ I couldn’t keep you here if it wasn’t what you wanted _ . 

Yuuri takes a deep breath. A long inward facing sigh. 

“I love you,” Yuuri says. 

“I know,” Viktor answers. “I thought you wanted me gone.”   
“No!” Yuuri exclaims, looking up at him. “I just-- I saw how you looked, yesterday. Looking at the other skaters. And I couldn’t...I couldn’t keep you away from that.” Yuuri swallows. His brown eyes find Viktor’s again. “I’m not more important than that.”

Viktor loves Yuuri so much. He loves his shy brown eyes, he loves how strangely  _ considerate _ he is, he loves that he speaks in a soft but steady voice, he loves that he surprises him by skating ridiculous programs and excelling, he loves that he wants Viktor to be happy, at all costs. Yuuri, selfishly, wants Viktor to be happy more than anything else.

VIktor looks at him, feels something blooming in his heart. 

“Yuuri, you made me feel happy for the first time in….so long. I had forgotten what happy felt like. And spending time with you, it makes me so happy.” Viktor swallows. Thinks for a moment, how to draw the English together to make clear the thing he means. 

“Yuuri,” Viktor says. “You would never  _ take _ me from anywhere. This is  why I love you. This is why I want to have the baby. With you. Both of us. All three of us. Together.”

Yuuri looks, eyes heavy with wonder, at Viktor. At his eyes. At  _ him _ . 

“Together,” Yuuri says. 

Viktor nods, again. 

“Can you still coach me? Would it be too much stress? Where are we going to  _ live _ \-- we could stay with my parents or--” 

Viktor can hear Yuuri’s voice begin to spiral, panic begin to edge and lace his words. 

“Yuuri,” Viktor says. “My Yuuri.” He cups Yuuri’s face with his left hand, his cheek clammy and sweat sticky still. “Can you take a shower first? We still have your banquet.”

Yuuri seems to take a moment to come back to himself. To breathe, before he nods and says, “Can you help me unzip?”

Viktor smiles. “Of course,” he answers.

They both stand, Yuuri hissing at the pressure on his poor, abused feet. Viktor tutts, softly, and helps Yuuri out of his jacket and starts the long zipper at the neck of his costume, the mesh and material peeling away like a cocoon around his body. Yuuri’s pale back emerges, the netting bitten into the parts of him that are still cushioned by a little fat.

Viktor brushes the costume from Yuuri’s shoulders, looks at the pale, bent nape of Yuuri’s neck. 

Viktor leans forward, to the tender flesh there and kisses him. Lemongrass and sweetness and rain bloom into the room, wrap around Viktor so safe and reassuring. 

Yuuri sighs.

Viktor wraps his arms around him, rests his head on Yuuri’s bare shoulder. Half undressed, Yuuri stands and lets Viktor hold him tight. 

_ Don’t leave me again,  _ Viktor thinks. 

But eventually, Yuuri slips away to the shower and Viktor pulls out his good suit and Yuuri’s good suit and straightens them both. He pulls his clothes on and rakes his fingers through his hair, looking at himself in the mirror. 

He looks different from last year. 

His features have always been...severe. Sharp and clear-- even as a child, he has looked more angular and thin. He’d never realized that there was something almost skeletal to him before. A bareness there, almost a  hunger .  He hasn’t gained weight (not yet, and  _ bozhe moi _ , he guesses that’s coming) but something has shifted. 

He looks like a stranger to himself. A happy stranger. Viktor swallows. It's the first time he's seen someone he thinks might be  _himself_   and not a doll. Himself and not a plaything. 

The water shuts off. Viktor smiles. 

He looks at the silver medal on the bed. 

Yuuri-- who broke his record and will next year take gold-- Viktor’s Yuuri, steps out of the bathroom.


	4. Chapter 4

It’s in the airport. Barcelona. Early morning. Yuuri is stationed at the terminal with their carry on luggage. Viktor has gone to get coffee. Or that is, Viktor is getting coffee for Yuuri and mint tea for himself, because it turns out he’s been living with morning sickness for almost three weeks now, by himself, and it’s been wretched.

Yuuri’s own stomach turns guiltily to think that Viktor has been hurting and that he’s been hiding it from him. 

Yuuri swallows drily. 

Picks up his phone and dials the number for the inn. 

Mari has a cell phone, of course, but his parents do not. Just the landline that works as the household number and the number for inn bookings. 

“Yu-topia Katsuki!” His father greets on the line. “Katsuki Toshiya speaking!”

“Hey Dad,” Yuuri says. 

“Yuuri!” He says on the other end of the line. “Congratulations on your medal! We’re very proud! Your mother bought some  _ beautiful _ pork for you in celebration and Minako is planning on bringing over the  _ good _ wine. And of course, all of the Nishigoris cried. That Minami boy, too.”

Yuuri smiles. “Thanks, Dad,” he says. “Is-- are Mom and Mari up?”

“Mari’s in town and your mother is busy,” he says. “Why?”

“Uh,” Yuuri says. “Well, Viktor and I have some kind of...we have some pretty big news. And I-- I want some advice. If I can get it.”

“Of course,” he says. 

“Viktor is pregnant,” Yuuri says. 

“Ginger is great for nausea,” he answers, without missing a beat. “Of course, nesting instinct is different for everyone. When I had Mari it didn’t get too bad until seven months along. But your mother? As soon as she knew she was with you...you know, I don’t think I’ve  _ ever _ seen the inn so clean.”

Yuuri huffs a short laugh. “Thanks, Dad,” he says. 

“We already know you love each other,” he continues. “If you need anything, just tell us.”

“What if I fuck up?” Yuuri blurts. 

“You will,” he says. “And Viktor will and your baby will. But that’s okay. We’re all only human, and you have a forgiving nature and I have no doubt that any grandchild of mine will too. You just have to try your best, and if you need help, ask for it.” There’s a beat, a pause. Thoughtful. “That’s all your mother and I ever wanted from you and Mari. To try your best.”

The early morning light is cold and clear in the airport. It filters through the glass and steel structure and makes everything a little too blue, a little too bright. It makes it easy to excuse the tears gathering in Yuuri’s eyes. 

“Thanks Dad,” Yuuri says. 

“Now get off the phone,” he says. “Calling internationally is expensive! We’ll see you soon!”

Yuuri hangs up and sits in the terminal, waiting for Viktor to come back.

Twenty minutes later, he comes back with two large cups and a little less color in his cheeks. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “Had to stop by the bathroom.”

Yuuri takes the coffee from him and the immediately holds his hand. Vitya sighs, his whole chest rising and falling. He sits beside Yuuri and crosses his long legs. 

“I told my family,” Yuuri says. 

Viktor turns, looks at him. Something frozen and nervous in his expression. 

“Dad said ginger helps for nausea,” Yuuri answers. “And that if we need anything to just ask.”

Viktor looks visibly relieved. 

“We’re going back so I thought...they  _ should _ know. You’ll need a doctor,” Yuuri says. “And vitamins and what you have cravings and--” Yuuri freezes, realizing. “I’m sorry.  I should have waited. It was...it was yours to tell. I’m so sorry.”

Viktor goes still for a moment. He closes his eyes. Smiles, a little. 

“Thank you, my Yuuri,” he says. “Thank you.”

Yuuri nods. 

Looks at Viktor. 

Tall and strong and beautiful. 

Holds his hand and sits in the airport terminal, waiting to go home. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jast a short one


	5. Chapter 5

Yuuri holds Viktor’s hand and he never seems to stop. Viktor wakes up in the morning, and before he can dash to the bathroom, he has to disentangle Yuuri’s limbs from his torso. When he brushes his teeth, Yuuri settles in beside him, holding his hand. When Viktor gets his tea and sits down to breakfast, Yuuri is curled into his side, hand nestled into his, nosing quietly and gently into Viktor’s collarbone.

Yuuri isn’t a morning person. It’s not that he’s not beautiful in the morning, or funny or interesting. It’s that it takes him a long, slow time to begin to make sense of the world. To shift out of auto-pilot and into having a presence in the room. Viktor wakes up and takes five minutes or so and then he’s ready. Yuuri takes a while.

Viktor thinks, at first, that maybe it’s instinct. Yuuri, still waking, pulled inexorably to Viktor. But when he wakes up, even if his heavy, sleeping shoulders disappear, his hand remains; his body beside Viktor’s like an aura.

It’s just about the nicest thing Viktor has ever experienced, is the thing.

Viktor carefully eats a bowl of yogurt with fruit and granola and then a bowl of broth. Yuuri grabs the yogurt at the store for him-- Phichit recommended it to me in school; it helps settle the stomach-- and has his own bowl of broth and a bowl of rice with something fermented over top of it and an egg. Viktor does everything he can to keep from smelling it, but as much as he minds Yuuri’s fragrant breakfast, he loves Yuuri sitting so close beside him at the table more. He loves the moment between Yuuri’s first and second cup of cloudy, grassy tasting tea; the moment when Yuuri’s eyes flutter ever so barely and he registers the world around him. The moment right before he turns to Viktor and smiles and says, “Ohayou, Viktor.”

It is probably Viktor’s favorite thing in the world to smile back and say, “Good morning, my Yuuri.”

In the week that they have been back from Barcelona, the mornings have been so wonderfully consistent. Being at the inn with Yuuri has been like something from a dream, with how it fills Viktor to the ribs with that warm, contented feeling he spent so long so hungry for.

The mornings are perfect. It’s the rest of the day that seems to be troublesome.

Yuuri is doing everything he can to keep training. To run ladders and do sit ups and exercise and exercise and train and skate.

Viktor hasn’t been making workouts for him, though. He hasn’t been sending him on runs or to the rink. He has a few loose notes about Yuuri’s programs but nothing too concrete. More than anything, Viktor has been catching up on reading and wandering through town and having rambling conversations trying to get a better grasp of Japanese. He’s making himself a fixture at convenience stores and newsstands and at the Inn, where Hiroko carefully but firmly corrects his pronunciation.

It takes eleven days before Yuuri finally says, “Are-- are you still going to coach me?”

It’s at the steps outside the inn. A couple of guests are filing inside and Yuuri stands in his leggings and running shorts and jacket. His breath leaves small clouds on the December air.

Viktor smiles at him.

“Take three days,” Viktor says. “Don’t run. Don’t do ladders, don’t do lunges. You worked so hard, my Yuuri. You have to rest. Four Continents isn’t until February.”

Yuuri huffs a short sigh. Looks away from Viktor, his brown eyes looking irritated and sharp.

“You were just going to do this until I asked, weren’t you?” Yuuri asks.

Viktor nods. Chuckles.

Yuuri huffs again.

“I’m already dressed,” he whines.

Viktor nods.

Yuuri looks across the snowbright yard to the long hill down to the road that leads either to the slate grey winter beach or through the town.

“I’m already dressed,” he says, sighing. He gnaws his bottom lip. Viktor can see that it’s already chapped.

Momentum is perhaps the most powerful force in Yuuri’s life.

“Go on this run,” Viktor says. “And when you come back, relax.”

Yuuri nods, looking down the hill. He stretches and Viktor watches him set off, down through the snow, into the December winter.

Viktor stands there in his sweats and pajama shirt and watches his figure grow smaller and smaller, until Toshiya approaches behind him and says, “Come in from out of the snow!”

Viktor laughs. “Of course, of course,” he says.

“And in nothing but pajamas!” He tutts, scolding. “What if you caught cold? Yuuri would be inconsolable.”

He ushers him inside and tugs him over to a table before handing him a small cup of tea. Viktor wraps his hands around it and looks at it for a long time. When he rolls the ceramic cup in his hands, his ring makes a low scraping noise against it.

It’s weird. Viktor’s worn the ring for less than two weeks and it alread feels like it was always supposed to be a part of him. Inseperable from him.

In his pocket, his phone rings.

Viktor pulls it out.

“Hello?” He answers.

“Eleven days,” Yakov says on the other end. “Eleven days I have waited to hear from you, to hear you gloat or at the very least congratulate Yuri. Eleven days, Viktor, dear heavens.”

“Hello, Yakov, congratulations to Yurio. How is St. Petersburg?” Viktor says, chuckling. He stands and walks back to his room, sitting down on the bed.

“It is December, Vitya, how do you think it is; it is cold, you fool,” he says. “Now that we have exchanged pleasantries, when are you returning? Do you think I did not see how you watched the ice at your student’s competition? You want to come back and you will need a coach.”

“Yakov,” Viktor says, sighing. “Circumstances have changed.”

“Deflection is so  _ ugly _ Viktor,” Yakov murmurs. “Are you coming back or not?”

“I have to-- it’s not just my decision, Yakov,” Viktor says. “And I’ve retired from competition. I meant it. I still do.”

Yakov sighs again. “Don’t let him hold you behind,” he says. “You didn’t let any of the others do it. I know you think he’s special. He was an exceptional competitor. Do not let yourself be blinded by him.”

Viktor swallows. He feels tightness in his chest like a vice.

“Goodbye,” he says, and hangs up.

He sits on the bed in the inn for a long time.

“Hi, Yakov,” Viktor says, his voice low, looking at his phone. “We’re having a baby!”

He sighs. Grits his teeth.

He gets a text moments later.

_ yakov is PISSED what did you DO _ , it reads. It’s from Yurio.

_ He doesn’t know about the baby _ , he sends back. _ Mad I’m retiring _ .

There’s a long pause. A solid few minutes before Viktor gets a reply.  _ So it’s real? _

Viktor looks at his phone.

He wants Yuuri to come back from his run. To settle back in beside him and be close to him. To be warm beside him and to bring his lemongrass and rain smell into his room.

Viktor wishes Yuuri were here.

_ Yeah, _ Viktor answers.  _ Don’t tell anyone. _

Viktor tosses his phone to the side and there’s a knock on the door. He opens it Mari is there, her hand looped in Makkachin’s collar.

“Walk her,” she says. “She’s restless. Yuuri should have taken her running.”

Viktor nods. “Let me get dressed,” he says. “Sorry.”

Mari shakes her head. “You and my brother,” she sighs, heading back down the hallway.


	6. Chapter 6

Yuuri doesn’t realize until he’s  made it up the hill and back to the steps of the inn how _ tired _ he is. 

His calves and thighs are burning. His feet hurt-- he can feel every part of his shoe rubbing against the raw blisters and skin on his feet. His  _ back _ aches and his shoulders feel heavy. It’s uncanny. He’s run this same route at this same speed, daily, but it’s only now caught up to him how relentlessly, mercilessly  _ tired _ he is. 

He catches his breath before pulling the door open and stepping inside, tapping the snow off of his shoes and pulling on his uwabaki. He pulls off his jacket and runs his fingers through his sweaty hair, stepping through the genkan and into the inn proper. 

“Good run?” Mari asks, peering in from the kitchen. 

Yuuri nods, still a little breathless. 

“Viktor should be back soon,” she says. “He took the dog for a walk.”

Yuuri nods, again, and slips from the public part of the inn to the more private area, stepping into his childhood bedroom to undress and get ready for a shower. 

He pulls his sweaty shirt off of himself just as the door slides open, and he turns, half undressed, to see Viktor there. 

Viktor’s blue eyes are wide and beautiful, and he’s still flushed a little from outside. 

He looks at Yuuri before saying, “Don’t shower.”

Yuuri looks at him and nods, gravely. 

Viktor slides the door closed behind him. Yuuri doesn’t move. 

Viktor steps forward carefully, something tentative and strange in his body. His hands are cool where they fall on Yuuri’s collarbones and shoulders. Yuuri feels his blood surge meet his touch. Viktor pulls Yuuri into his arms. Rests his head on Yuuri’s shoulder and nests his nose into the side of Yuuri’s neck. He breathes in deeply. 

Yuuri wraps his arms around Viktor. He feels exhaustion hit him again, like a train. He feels himself caught in the Viktor’s hold and affection like a net. Entangled. 

Yuuri wraps his arms around Viktor’s torso. It’s uncanny, the way Viktor is taller than he is but that he is sheltered so effectively by Yuuri himself.

Viktor holds Yuuri and Yuuri holds him back. 

“I could take three days,” Yuuri says. “I could do it off my suppressant.”

Viktor looks up at him, blinks, languidly. “Really?” He asks. 

Yuuri nods. “I miss...you,” he says. 

Viktor takes another deep, sighing breath. Yuuri feels his exhalation brush over his own skin and a wave of goosebumps follow it. 

“How’s your stomach?” Yuuri asks. “Are you still…?”   
Viktor nods. 

“I’ll get you some ginger,” Yuuri answers. “That always helps me. When I’m sick.”

“My Yuuri,” Viktor purrs. “Protecting me and our baby.”

The sentence is like lightning. Draws everything into sharp, clear focus. Viktor and the baby. The  _ baby _ . Yuuri pulls Viktor in closer, or tries to, at the mention of the baby. 

“Tell me everything,” Yuuri says. “Promise me, now, you’ll tell me everything. When you’re hungry, what hurts, when you want something. Please.”

Viktor laughs, his voice so wonderfully light. “You won’t get sick of me?” He asks. “When my ankles swell and none of my clothes fit?”

Yuuri shakes his head. “I’ll never get sick of you, Viktor. Never.”

Yuuri knows when Viktor says things like a joke but they aren’t one. He’s learned what that shape of Viktor’s voice sounds like when he’s making a joke that isn’t a joke, when he’s so scared, and scared of a thing he can’t articulate, a thing someone else has made him feel  _ small _ for. 

Yuuri holds Viktor close, tight, and he closes his eyes and he just--

There was a moment, in Barcelona. Before Yuuri knew and before he took to the ice. 

In front of a cathedral, voices echoing softly in the night. Glowing lights. The laughter of children. 

A dark winter’s night, but very special. Less than two weeks ago. 

Viktor’s fingers held in his hand, precious. Bare in the night air, Viktor’s smile and the glittering tears in his eyes. 

It felt so peaceful. The only answer-- the only way this could have ever been. 

This feels almost the same way. 

Yuuri feels Viktor’s clothes warm under his skin. He feels the tiredness wash back over him. He  _ yawns _ . 

Viktor sighs. “Yuuri, beloved,” he says. “My bed is bigger.”

Yuuri sighs this time, and shifts, scooping Viktor up into his arms and parting the door to his bedroom with his foot. He turns in the hallway to close the door back and then turns back to walk down a ways and open Viktor’s door the same way. He steps into the room and closes the door once more before carefully dropping Viktor onto his larger bed. 

Viktor barely suppresses his burbling laughter behind his hands, bouncing on his mattress a little. He smiles and pulls the blankets back and says, “Let’s go back to bed, hm, Yuuri?”

It’s nearly seven, but Yuuri doesn’t think he could stay awake any longer if he tried. 

Yuuri pulls his sweats back off, just in his boxers, and slips under the blankets, Viktor turns to face him, his head on the pillow, so close. So beautiful. 

Yuuri pulls him in closer and takes a deep breath. He hasn’t had his does this morning yet. In an hour or so, he’ll probably start reacting to smell more intensely. Instead of the foggy echo Viktor’s scent usually is, Yuuri will get to feel it as the thing it is. 

Three days vacation. 

Yuuri takes a deep breath. Feels his eyes flutter, lazily.

“Vitya,” Yuuri murmurs. 

“My Yuuri,” Viktor answers, laughing so very quietly. 

“Did you tell anyone else?” Yuuri asks. 

“Not yet,” Viktor answers. “Did you?”   
“Not until you do,” Yuuri replies. It’s much more Viktor’s news to break. Phichit’s gonna kill him but that’s a later problem. 

There’s a pause. “I almost told Yakov,” he says. “I don’t think it’ll go well.”

Yuuri blinks a little more awake. “Does he still not like me?” He asks.

“It’s not you,” Viktor says. “It’s me. I’m...I’ve made bad decisions before.”

Yuuri’s thumb strokes idly over Viktor’s arm. 

“It’s not your fault people have hurt you before,” Yuuri says. “It’s not your fault.”

Viktor smiles. “Thank you, my Yuuri,” he murmurs. “Sleep for me, hm?”   
Yuuri nods, and he falls back asleep, in Viktor’s bed. 

He rests. 


	7. Chapter 7

The thing about Viktor’s apartment is he only packed and shipped the things that were important to him. He didn’t take his clothes or his dishes or his pots and pans or his bedspread. He didn’t take his blender or his tv. He had furniture shipped there, but Yuri is struck by the fact that the furniture was a new purchase. Viktor, a man of two couches, each on a different continent.

Yuuri has a key. Everyone at the rink does. Because Yakov owns the apartment, Viktor makes it open to them. A place to rest, he used to say, but Yuri has long known it’s because Viktor doesn’t like to be left to his thoughts. At least, when he was in St. Petersburg, he didn’t. 

Yuri has known Viktor since he was ten and since Viktor was an impetuous twenty one year old with the world open wide to him and lightness in his heart. Still approaching his second win at the Grand Prix Final-- talented but not yet a legend, not yet unapproachable. 

Yuri remembers Viktor skating with them. He remembers him laughing with them and crashing into camps and lessons to tease Yakov. He remembers him talking seriously with six year olds about lifts and jumps. 

Viktor never chose to be unapproachable. It was foisted onto him. 

Yuri doesn’t talk about it. It’s childish and embarrassing and it’s unrealistic. A  _ crush _ . It’s babyish and foolish and Yuri’s going to present soon. He’ll be a  _ man _ soon.  

Still though, no one mentions that Yuri has basically moved out of the diplomatic apartments and into the place that used to be Viktor’s. Viktor knows and doesn’t seem to mind.  _ I took everything important with me,  _ he says, like he didn’t leave a few thousand dollars in armani suits in a closet here. Like he didn’t leave five Grand Prix Final medals and one Olympic gold in a drawer in the bedroom, next to some underwear and some dried flowers in a box.

And Viktor’s been gone for less than a year. Barely eight months, but it’s stopped being  _ Yuri visiting in Viktor’s house _ and it’s become  _ this teakettle and television and umbrella are Yuri’s now _ . 

No one talks about it. Yuri doesn’t pay rent and Yakov doesn’t ask for it. Yuri’s mail starts showing up, mixed in with pieces of spam for either Viktor or Yakov. No one asks Yuri why he moved in here. Yuri’s not sure he could give a real answer. 

But it’s different now. Right now. After Barecelona. After what Yuri knows. 

Yuri looks at the texts he got from Viktor.

_ Yeah. Don’t tell anyone _ . 

Yuri takes a deep breath and lets it go. 

He puts the phone down on Viktor’s kitchen counter. 

Yuri pours himself a cup of water and sets the teakettle on. He pulls out a jar of peanut butter and eats a spoonful. 

When he checks his phone again, he has a text that reads,  _ what happened at rostelecom? when i was gone?  _

Yuri looks at it. Tries to remember. 

_ he was nervous as fck. he was super  fucked up when he finished i don’t know? why _

There’s a pause. Yuri fishes out a teabag and pops it in a cup. 

_ yuuri thinks yakov doesn’t like him,  _ the reply reads.  _ something happen?  _

_ fuck i don’t know i had a lot going on,  _ Yuri replies. It’s true. 

Potya pads up on her tiny perfect feet and rubs against Yuri’s legs. Yuri scratches her absently. 

There’s no answer. 

Yuri sighs dramatically. Today was long and shitty. Meetings with sponsors and drills, staying limber for worlds and working on landing everything  _ perfectly _ . Endless stretching drills with Lilia.

Yuri lets his eyes settle closed for just a moment. 

There’s going to be a baby. And Viktor’s--

And Yuuri’s...Yuri wouldn’t have guessed it, after bursting into him in the bathroom. But it’s fucked up, because  the pig is just the kind of idiot Viktor wants. Crybaby anxiety and all. And he’s having his  _ baby _ . 

And Yuri guesses that means Viktor’s life here is over. 

Viktor’s apartment seems so much bigger with just Yuri in it. He sort of understands why Viktor gave everyone the key now.

It’s different now, except--

Yuri has this awful suspicion that maybe it’s no different now than it was eight months ago.  And that maybe Yuuri would be around even without a baby. 

That maybe Viktor doesn’t have a life without Yuuri now. 

Yuri thinks about Viktor. And he thinks about Yuuri. 

He sits down on the couch and looks at phone, before he bites the bullet.

_ hey beka,  _ he sends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know this one is Mad short; the next one will definitely be longer


	8. Chapter 8

Yuuri wakes up with a weird headache pressing up against his eyes and a gaping cold space beside him on the mattress. He blinks a few times, the sunlight hard and cold against his retinas. He hisses a little and tries to figure it out. 

What’s missing? 

Yuuri can’t figure it out, though, and it’s just beginning to really bother him when Viktor comes back into the room in a fresh breeze of eucalyptus and salt air, ice and pines. 

“Vitya,” Yuuri murmurs low in his mouth. “Where did you go?” 

Viktor chuckles as he climbs back into bed, settling up beside Yuuri who noses into Viktor’s cool chest. 

“My Yuuri,” he murmurs. “I get so badly nauseous, I apologize.”

Yuuri pulls Viktor under the sheets, closer to him to better touch him, be near to him, hold him tight, to keep him safe. 

Viktor chuckles. “Are you cold, my Yuuri?” He asks.

“You are,” Yuuri answers. “Have to keep you warm.”

Viktor laughs again, his voice light and free. Yuuri loves that, loves that Viktor can do things so weightlessly, so gracefully, so easily. 

“My big protector, hmm?” Viktor asks. “Keep me safe?”

Yuuri nods, and he catches it. The smell of Viktor, more wonderfully clear than it’s ever been before.

Yuuri realizes it’s not eucalyptus, it’s the floral, bitter spiciness of anise. Vegetal and green, against a dark, resinous wood. It leaves something tingling in his senses, that still wintery, icy smell seizing him. If mineral were rendered into something vegetal, something growing and green. There’s the wonderful tone of salt, a texture of coldness, of ice. And there’s something underneath, something as sweet as honey and new. 

Yuuri feels it before he hears it and realizes it. A feeling circles and rumbles up out of him, something round and growling.

Viktor’s breath freezes for a moment, and then laughter tumbles out of him, cheerful and joyous. 

“You’re purring,” Viktor says, laughing. “My Yuuri, you’re purring! I didn’t know you did that!”

Yuuri blinks a few times, feeling dopey, almost drunk. “I didn’t either,” he answers. “Smell good. Think I can smell the pup.”

Viktor pauses again. Yuuri looks up, at him. At his blue eyes, watering, and his fine fringe of silver hair, at his high forehead and his long nose. 

“You really want this,” Viktor says, almost blankly. “With me. You and me and--“ He stops, his voice giving out.

Yuuri nods, looking at him, nested close and warm in the bed.

“Us,” Yuuri says, curling in tight, catching Viktor’s smell in his sheets. His eyes feel heavy; so does his body. 

“So sleepy again?” Viktor asks. “I guess I should ask your parents for ginger, then.”

Yuuri sits up, pulling the sheets and blanket with him, Viktor chuckling more. He can’t help but get the distant impression that maybe Viktor is teasing him, just a little. Not in a mean way, in a way sort of like playing, like how Phichit would do sometimes, or Mari. 

“I can,” Yuuri says. “I can get you ginger.”

Viktor smiles at him. He looks so comfortable, so beautiful. Yuuri feels his heartbeat rush and speed. 

“Thank you, Yuuri,” Viktor answers. “Should I come with you?”

Yuuri shakes his head. He looks like he belongs here, in the bed and the sunlight. 

Yuuri pulls on a sweatshirt and some athletic shorts and staggers out of the room, down the hall, and into the kitchen. He pulls a bag of ginger candy out of the cabinet and turns around and his mother is there. 

Mom smells like apples. Yuuri forgets-- it’s been so long since he was home and off his medication. But she smells like apples and running water and a little barest bit like iron. 

She smiles. “Yuuri?” She asks.

“Viktor’s stomach is upset,” he says.

She nods. “We also have mint tea, from the last time he was here. Try the ginger though.”

“Thanks, mom,” Yuuri answers, before he turns and heads back to the bedroom. 

The inn smells almost like a fog. There’s something ingrained in the wood of it-- something that is both the family and also the years and years and years of strangers passing through, something intangible but ever present. Yuuri tries not to think about it too much, heading the shortway down the hall and opens up Viktor’s room again. 

Viktor sits on the bed with his hand over his mouth, his eyes bright but his face gone a little pale.

“Vitya?” Yuuri asks softly.

Viktor nods, his eyes squinting closed. 

The room smells, ever so slightly, of acid. 

Yuuri creeps over to the bed and unwraps a ginger candy.

Viktor carefully takes it into his and and looks at it, queasy. He pops it into his mouth and closes his eyes, takes shuddering, slow breaths. 

“You need a doctor,” Yuuri says.

Viktor shakes his head. “Not an emergency.”

“No, but,” Yuuri swallows, drily. “What if there is one? How would we know?”

Viktor doesn’t say anything for a minute, before he says, “I will. Soon. When you get back to training, mmm?”

Yuuri holds his hand, tight. 

“Soon,” Viktor says, his voice steady. Utterly reassuring. 

Yuuri nods. 

“How is your nose?” He asks. 

“It’s a lot,” Yuuri says, honestly. “I might be mostly cooped up while I’m like this.” Getting out of bed cleared his head but he still feels stupid and dopey. Slow. That’s new. Usually it’s the worst kind of anxiety that hangs on him; hypervigilant, jittering paranoia that leaves him flinching and high strung. He prefers this, but neither is great. 

“You seem sleepy,” Viktor says. 

Yuuri nods. He yawns. He just woke up, and already, he’s thinking about a nap.

“You smell like fennel,” Yuuri says. “Not eucalyptus. Different. I like it.”

Viktor smiles He leans to the side, resting against Yuuri’s shoulder. “What else do you like?” Viktor asks. 

“You,” Yuuri says. 

He can almost feel how Viktor smiles, feels something shift in his body, against him. 

“What about me?” Viktor asks. 

Yuuri takes a deep breath. 

“Everything,” he says, nearly punch drunk on the person Viktor is. 

 


	9. Chapter 9

Yuuri is different. Not in a good way or a bad way, just in a different way. It takes a few hours before Viktor really puts it all together, but once he does, it’s undeniable. It’s not the closeness; it’s that there’s a particular texture to it. Yuuri seems slower, quieter. There’s something distinctly unsure. 

They wake up for the second time, Yuuri nestled distinctly into Viktor’s side, his breath slow and steady, his brown eyes wide. They pull on clothes and venture down the hall and into the kitchen, to grab something to eat.  And Yuuri’s hand wraps into Viktor’s and his warm body leans against his side and his eyes drift closed and open, lazily. 

Viktor stands in the kitchen, looking over the unfamiliar cabinets and countertops. “Yuuri,” he says, softly. “What do you want to eat?”

There’s a long pause, strangely expectant, as if the information is filtering slowly into Yuuri’s brain, processing. 

“I don’t know,” Yuuri says. “I have to stick to my eating plan.”

Viktor huffs the barest laugh. “I don’t know,” Viktor murmurs. “Maybe your coach could be convinced to let you cheat just one day.”

Yuuri grumbles, a low sound in his throat, before he says, “Maybe my coach could but not me.”

Viktor chuckles. “Eggs?” He asks. “Maybe on rice, like you enjoy?”

Yuuri smiles again. “There should be rice in the cooker,” he says. “Mom sets it every morning. And dashi on the stove.”

“Dashi?” Viktor asks. 

Yuuri nods. “Broth,” he says. “It makes the rice taste good.”

Viktor squeezes Yuuri’s hand. “Even hypothetically, you are a better cook than me.”

“I didn’t grow up cooking,” Viktor answers. “Mama and Papa; hmm, they did not like to cook.”

“I do,” Yuuri says. “I’ll cook for us.”

“I want to learn,” Viktor says. “If you want to teach me.”

“Yes,” Yuuri says. 

But he doesn’t let go of him and he doesn’t move. He just stands beside Viktor with his head laid on his shoulder and his big brown eyes slowly blinking.

“Yuuri?” Viktor asks. “Are you feeling okay?”

“Sleepy,” Yuuri says. “The smells. There’s a lot of,” he pauses as if considering-- composing. “Information. Can’t focus.”

“Oh,” Viktor says, “maybe I should cook for us, then? And you can sit and rest.”

“No, I should. I should take care of you,” Yuuri says, standing a little straighter. “It’s my job-- I have to. For you and the baby.”

Viktor lays a kiss on Yuuri’s head, his dark hair tickling under his nose. “Mmm, Yuuri, let me care for you. There will be plenty of time for you to take care of me.”

Yuuri sighs. “Okay,” he says. 

“Go sit down,” Viktor says. “Let me at least try.”

Yuuri sighs again. Stalks off to the dining room. Viktor watches him go, and for the first time, he tries to earnestly unravel the workings of the kitchen. 

It’s both too big and too small; stuffed earnestly corner to corner with dishes and cookware. Everything is clean but strangely organized, and a heavy haze of steam hangs in the air. Knives suspended on a magnetic strip on the wall and gas stove with a small charcoal grill beside.

Viktor stands there before he begins to open things and poke around.

“What are you doing?” Viktor hears and he looks up, and Mari stands there, in the doorway, an eyebrow raised. 

“Oh,” Viktor says. “I’d like to cook something, for Yuuri. Something easy. But I’m lost in the kitchen.”

Viktor tries to keep his Japanese as intelligible as possible. He mostly uses English with Yuuri, and his Japanese is still wildly limited. 

Mari huffs a short laugh, the same sort of laugh Yuuri makes when Viktor is being ridiculous. 

“You wouldn’t,” Mari murmurs. “It’s not built for anyone alive.”

She opens a cabinet and pulls down a couple of bowls. 

“What?” Viktor asks. 

Mari pauses, thinking. “Our mother, her father, her father’s father-- him-- he built it.”  Mari says. “This was his kitchen.” She speaks carefully and clearly, in between the gaps of what Japanese Viktor knows. There’s something exploratory to their shared vocabulary-- not quite euphemistic but not straightforward. Wandering between the two of them. 

Viktor blinks for a moment. Registers that.

“I--wow,” Viktor says. 

Mari nods. “Did you know Yuuri is the only one in the family who wasn’t born here?” She pulls a couple eggs out of the fridge and lays them on the counter, beside a shock of scallions. 

“You were born here?” Viktor asks.

“Everyone was born here. ” Mari says. “Yuuri was the first.” She pulls a knife from the strip and lays it on the counter. “He was the first to go.” 

“Go where?” Viktor asks. 

Mari gestures, from her chest outward, her palm open. “Away,” she says, shrugging. She points, down, at the inn. “He didn’t stay.” 

Viktor doesn’t know what to say to that. He just feels it wash over him, this thing about Yuuri he never knew. 

Mari gestures. “Come here,” she says. “Learn.”   
Viktor stumbles over to where she’s set up, eager to learn. 

“Rice in the bowl,” she says. “And then stock over. Then the egg, then scallion. You need it all to be hot.”

Viktor nods. 

“Mari,” Viktor hears, and he turns around, and Hiroko stands in the doorway with her small hands on her hips, frowning just a little. “You can’t put our guests to work!”

“ _ Ma _ ,” Mari retorts, her eyes finding the ceiling. “He--”   
“I wanted to,” Viktor interrupts. “For Yuuri..”

Hiroko smiles, so gently, all sunlight and warmth. “You heat the bowls,” she says. “In water, before you fill them. The egg will cook through and it will be hot.”

Viktor smiles back. Nods. “Thank you,” he says.

She smiles again, and nods. She looks at Mari and says something, something that Viktor can’t quite catch. 

Mari rolls her eyes. 

Viktor rolls the bowl between his hands, feels the curved sides and the shiny finish. 

“Heat the bowl,” he murmurs. “So that everything stays hot.”


	10. Chapter 10

Vitya keeps throwing up. 

He makes Yuuri breakfast, and after Yuuri takes a few bites and sings its praises, Viktor excuses himself and throws up. Yuuri finishes and when he clumsily stumbles down the hallway, the bathroom door is still closed. 

Yuuri sinks to the floor in front of it. He is seized by the immediate familiarity of it. 

Yuuri wraps his arms over his knees and stares at the door, time passing. 

Beautiful Vitya, talented and smart and funny and nice and so  _ caring _ \-- beautiful Vitya, in the bathroom. 

Yuuri wishes he could open the door and be in there, with him, but--

Yuuri sits on the floor and he looks at the door and he waits. 

After what feels like an eternity, the door opens, and Viktor steps out. HIs face is damp, the edges of his long silver hair wet. His eyes look red and puffy. 

But he smiles at Yuuri. “I’m fine,” he says. “I’m fine.”

Yuuri scrambles up from the floor and pulls him into his arms. Viktor laughs, the kind he laughs when he’s just been crying and doesn’t know what else to do. 

“I hate throwing up,” he says, very softly in Yuuri’s ear. 

Yuuri holds him a little tighter. 

“Yuuri?” Viktor asks. “Can we go to the beach?”

Yuuri looks up at him, blinks a couple of times. “Yeah,” he says. 

Viktor smiles. They tear into the bedroom and pull on pants and sweaters and scarves. VIktor loudly protests that his strong Russian blood can stand up to the Japanese winter no problem, but Yuuri buttons him into a coat and ties a scarf around his neck. They set off from the house laughing, Viktor teasing Yuuri incessantly and Makkachin bounding behind on her leash. 

The air outside is cold, pulling the blood to Yuuri’s cheeks and nose and ears. Viktor flushes too, in a way that’s so beautiful it makes Yuuri’s chest ache. They hold hands on the long walk down to the beach, along the bridge, past the occasional tourist or high schooler on a bike. 

“Your sister said you were the first one in the family who wasn’t born in the inn,” Viktor says, his voice just loud enough to tuck into Yuuri’s ear, through the rustle of the wind. 

Yuuri nods. “Mom wanted to have me in the inn, but I was a dangerous baby,” he says.

“Dangerous?” Viktor asks, his tone playful, a small smile over his lips. They take the concrete stairs down to the sand. Viktor unclips Makkachin’s leash from her harness and she dashes off. “Did you have a knife in with you or...?” Viktor asks.

Yuuri shakes his head. “No-- I--Mom carrying was-- risky?” he says. He bites his lip, trying to figure out how to say it. “I was a little early and I was the wrong way around and Ma had uhm--”  _ gestational diabetes _ , “her blood was...carrying me...her blood sugar was strange.”

Viktor’s expression shifts, understanding. 

“I’ll get a doctor, soon,” Viktor says. “I promise.”

Yuuri nods. “I know,” he says. 

_ Where will you get a doctor _ ? Hangs unsaid on the air.  _ Where will we live? _

“The doctor your parents used,” Viktor says, his tone suspiciously light and conversational, “are they still in practice?” 

Yuuri shakes his head. “He was old when Mari and I were delivered. He retired off somewhere, I think.”

Yuuri looks at Viktor, windwhipped, and he says, “Are you planning-- are we going to stay here?”

Viktor looks from Yuuri back to the beach. “There’s not,” he pauses. “You’re my family.”

“What about the season?” Yuuri asks. “And Yurio and Chris and Yakov and--”

Viktor shrugs. “I coached you here last year,” he says. “The rink is good and private and Okukawa and the Nishigoris can provide excellent support.” Viktor pauses. He swallows, before turning behind himself and spitting into the sand. He rests his hand on his stomach. “I can’t wait for  _ this _ part to be over,” he complains. 

“What about Russia?” Yuuri asks. 

Viktor doesn’t answer the question, though. He bends over and pulls a stick out of the sand and tosses it for Makkachin to fetch. 

It makes something in Yuuri’s stomach twist, but he doesn’t ask about it. 

The next few days are strange, for Yuuri. There’s a vagueness, a lack of focus. He sleeps a lot, draped over Viktor and into his lap. There’s the warm, dozy presence of Viktor and then the cold, absent feeling when he goes to the bathroom for too long. It goes in starts and stops, this vacation from the ice and from his suppressant. When the clock winds down on the third day, Yuuri feels  _ ready _ . 

He wishes he thought Viktor felt the same way. 

Viktor throws up, and he keeps throwing up. 


	11. Chapter 11

It scares Yuuri, is what it does. 

The clock winds down on vacation and Yuuri takes his blocker again, considering the shape and color of the pill before he takes it. 

Viktor sits down on the bed beside him, draped into his side like he’s half melted. Even now, in the glimmering moments before waking up, Viktor is all grace, all beauty. 

Yuuri loves him so much it hurts. 

“Will you miss it?” Viktor asks, his voice lower than it usually is, held into just a whisper, hitting along that deeper register, skimming across its surface.

“I don’t miss being disoriented,” Yuuri answers. “Or-- it’s like always waiting for a bad thing to happen. I don’t miss that.”

Yuuri looks down at the top of Viktor’s head. Sees the whorl of silvery hair. Darker than platinum, lighter than grey. Yuuri can never quite believe Viktor’s doesn’t dye or bleach it. But he doesn’t. 

“I’ll miss feeling closer to you, though,” Yuuri says. 

“You smell different, off of it,” Viktor murmurs. “Did you know?”   
Yuuri shakes his head.

“Just a little,” Viktor says. “I don’t know if anyone else could notice it. There’s something. I don’t know what it was. But it was just a little different. Maybe citrus? It was so nice.”

Yuuri smiles.”Maybe we’ll figure it out sometime,” he says. 

“Mmm,” Viktor murmurs. “Maybe.”

“How are you feeling?” Yuuri asks. 

Viktor sighs. “I’ll meet you at the gym,” he says. 

“Okay,” Yuuri says. “Try to eat something? Mom keeps protein bars in a cabinet for me. You can ask her for one.”

Viktor nods. 

Yuuri kisses the top of Viktor’s head gently. Gets up and slowly guides VIktor back under the blankets. He was up and down all night, his stomach still so upset. Not holding the rice or the miso or the paltry quarter-portion of grilled chicken Yuuri optimistically slid into his bowl. 

Time passes. 

Yuuri goes from vacation back to training.

Yuuri takes a jog through the city, climbing up and through the hills, through the alleys, greeting everyone as he goes. He does a mile on the beach, feeling the burn through his thighs and calves. The run is long, purposefully so. There’s something to getting back into the stretch by pushing at the lapsed boundary of his stamina. There’s something to making it last as long as possible so Viktor won’t be late to the gym. 

Viktor is twenty minutes late anyway, Yuuri already pulling courses on the rowing machine and eying the ladder for pull ups. 

He looks tired. Bags under his eyes, and something weaving and stuttering to his pace. Yuuri is training, warming himself up to take to the ice in a couple days. Viktor sits at a table with a binder a laptop, looking from Yuuri to the laptop and back. Viktor makes notes and watches and gives encouragement, when he can. But he also runs off, and Yuuri knows with a tight sureness that it’s because Viktor can’t keep down food, can barely keep down water and ginger and gatorade. 

It’s not supposed to be a routine. Viktor being tired and late, up all night and asleep all through the day.  It’s not supposed to be, but it is. 

A week or more passes like this, Yuuri’s worry growing at the grinding of bones in Viktor’s wrist and the heavy bag under his eyes suffocating him. 

Yuuri won’t go to the rink without Viktor, and he won’t make Viktor sit in the rink when he can’t stop shivering and can barely keep his eyes open. 

Neither of them talk about it. They barely talk at all. 

It’s more than halfway through January, and Yuuri knows something has to come to a head. Waking up with Viktor all bones and exhaustion beside him one more day is putting something leaden on his heart, on his tongue, on his soul. 

But Yuuri, pressed lips cowardice and heavy tongued, just pulls on his sweats and goes for a jog, long and all the way through the city.

And Yuuri goes to the gym, and waits. And waits and waits and waits and waits. 

And nothing happens. Yuuri waits and Viktor never comes. Yuuri waits in the gym for more than an hour, and Viktor never comes.

Yuuri fishes his phone out of the tight zippered pocket of his sweats. No messages, no calls.

Yuuri runs as fast as he can the whole two miles from the gym to the spring. Sprints, as fast as his body can take him, heart overloud in his chest and brain full of loud static. 

Viktor’s not in the bed. 

Yuuri stands in the doorway, panting, breathless, trying to think. Trying to remember. Trying to put his memory to  _ literally _ anything, any kind of thought at all, about where Viktor could be. 

Yuuri tries to catch it, the thought, and he turns around all at once and tears into the bathroom. 

“Vitya,” Yuuri breathes, and Viktor looks up from where he is in front of the toilet, his pale face lined with worry and tears. 

Yuuri falls to his knees and gathers him into his arms, holds him close and tight, as much as he can. 

“We have to go to a doctor,” Yuuri says. “We have to go, today.”

“Yuuri?” Viktor asks.

“I was so scared,” Yuuri says. “I thought--”

But the thought won’t come to Yuuri’s mouth. The thought can barely come to his brain without being lost in all the static. 

“Viktor, we have to,” Yuuri says. “ _ Today. _ ”

“Okay,” Viktor says. “Okay, Yuuri. Okay. I promise.”

Yuuri nods. “No rink,” he says. “No training. We have to go now.”

“Yuuri,” Viktor sighs. “I’m fine, okay, it’s not an emergency.”

Yuuri keeps holding him. He tries to ground himself. He tries to stay calm. He tries to quiet the panic. He tries. 

“Yuuri,” Viktor says, after a moment. “You are hurting me.”

Yuuri lets him go. Wipes his face with the back of his hand, tries to take a breath that will steady him. 

Viktor looks worried. “Yuuri?” He asks. “Yuuri, can you take a breath for me?” 

And Yuuri does, but his vision swims with black spots and his heart is beating so  _ fast _ and he can’t calm down. He swallows a gulp, a breath, and he closes his eyes. 

“Oh, my Yuuri,” Viktor says. “Can you take another breath for me?”

Yuuri tries. 

“Okay, Yuuri,” Viktor says. He takes his hand, or  he tries to, but Yuuri rips his hand away, like a wounded animal.

Viktor doesn’t say anything, but he also doesn’t leave. And Yuuri keeps trying, keeps trying to pull himself up out of the feeling. 

It feels like hours. It feels like  _ years _ .

But it happens, eventually, and Viktor is still sitting on the floor with him, and his mother and sister and standing in the doorway. 

Yuuri takes a deep breath. He gestures to them both, just an acknowledging wave of his hand.  _ Hi Mom. Hi Mari.  _

Viktor gives him a thin, wan sort of smile. 

“Yuuri,” he says, “are you okay?”

Yuuri nods. “I’m fine. I’m fine,” he answers. “I’m fine.” He takes a deep breath, through his nose. Catches the smell of vomit. Tries to stay calm. 

“I got scared,” he says. “I  _ am _ scared.”

“Yuuri?” his mother asks. 

“I’m okay,” Yuuri says. “I’m okay, Mom.”

“Vicchan?” She asks, her voice soft. 

“Kastuki-sama,” Viktor says, “Where can I find a doctor?”

“A doctor?” She asks.

Viktor nods, his  hand settled light over his own stomach and he nods. “Yes,” he answers. “For me and the baby.”

Her eyes grow wide. As do Mari’s. 

“There’s a baby?” She asks. 


	12. Chapter 12

Yuuri’s mother says it, and Viktor looks from her full, aghast expression back to Yuuri, who looks like he’s been struck with lightning.

Yuuri opens his mouth, to say something, but all that comes out is a garbled, strangled kind of noise. He close his mouth, and takes a breath, before saying, in careful English, “I told Dad.”

Mari looks from Yuuri to Viktor to her mother to back to Viktor. “Morning sickness,” she says, putting it together.

Viktor smiles, or tries to. “All the time sickness,” he replies.

“ _ Toshiya! _ ” Hiroko cries out, her voice loud. There’s a  _ thump _ , distinct, and then the patter of footfalls over the floors and up the stairs, into the hall.

Yuuri’s father appears in the doorway. 

A heated, fast conversation follows. Viktor can’t quite catch it. 

The way Yuuri looks like he wishes the ground would open up and swallow him whole makes it clear that Yuuri catches all of it. 

“Dad forgot to tell them,” he eventually says, looking wide eyed into space. “He just...forgot. Assumed I told them.”

Viktor finds himself laughing. He can’t help it. It tumbles out of him, like rainfall. 

He’s so tired. He’s been tired for weeks. Barely sleeping through the night, hardly eating anything, hardly giving Yuuri all the time and attention and  _ work _ he deserves. It’s been so hard and so scary, and Yuuri can’t worry over him. Yuuri has a job to do, an art to perfect, a medal to bring home. Competition, ever immanent. Viktor can’t go to the doctor because Yuuri can’t be away from the ice, but Yuuri’s refused to get to the rink if Viktor isn’t there to coach him and Viktor can’t coach him until he goes to the doctor and--

They didn’t know. 

“Viktor?” Yuuri asks, softly. 

Viktor wipes his face. Pulls tears away. 

“Excuse me,” he says, chuckling. “I’m sorry.”

Hiroko looks at Viktor and she makes a gesture. She settles her hands on her torso, right beneath her breasts and curves them up and outward, arcing down to her pelvis. She looks at Viktor, eyes wide. Thunderstruck. 

“ _ Okaasan! _ ” Yuuri exclaims, sounding mortified. 

Her eyes go big and sort of watery, and one moment she’s standing and the next she’s on the floor, pulling Viktor into her arms, crying. 

Viktor wishes he knew what to make of it. Her soft arms, pulled close and tight around his shoulders. The feeling of her tears wet on her cheeks, wet on Viktor’s neck. The smell of her-- blood and apples and resin. The texture of her clothes under Viktor’s fingertips. 

Viktor holds her back, overwhelmed. 

“Mom,” Yuuri says, softly. “Mom, you’re really-- Mom.”

She pulls away, and she laughs, brightly. Merrily. She pulls off her glasses and wipes the tears from her eyes. It startles Viktor, to see this gesture that’s so familiar on his Yuuri written on her. To see this emotive, shifting grace hereditary. 

Will the baby do the same thing, one day? 

She stands and opens the cabinet above the sink, rummages for a moment. She pulls out a bottle, brown glass, old. She hands it to Viktor. 

Viktor looks at it, and then looks at her.

“Ma, how old is that?” Yuuri asks.

She says something that again, Viktor can’t quite catch. 

Yuuri shakes his head. “That can’t work-- they had it compounded when Mari was a baby,” he says. 

“It works,” is all Hiroko says.

“I thought you  _ knew _ !” Toshiya says in English, clearly for Viktor’s benefit. 

“Dad,” Yuuri says, sighing. 

Viktor opens the bottle and shakes out a pill and swallows one. 

Mari wipes her hands on her apron. “Need to find you a doctor,” she says. 

Viktor nods. Yuuri’s hands are buried in his face. 

Mari walks away. Viktor and Yuuri stay on the bathroom floor. 

It’s a long moment before either of them says anything, Quiet and intense. 

“I was scared,” Yuuri says. 

“I know,” Viktor answers. “I figured.”

“You were late,” Yuuri says. “And I thought-- I panicked.”

“I know,” Viktor says, again. 

“I’ve been scared,” Yuuri says. He looks over at him, his brown eyes unbearably large and sad. “I wish-- I wish-- I wish I were smart enough or- or brave enough or  _ something  _ so I could have told you before--” Yuuri looks at his lap, at his hands resting there, curled into each other. “Before.”

Viktor swallows. His throat still burns a little, from the acid. He still feels disgusting and nauseous and wretched. Sweaty-- not even showered yet. Yuuri is still flushed and sweating, his hair wild, his body shaking slightly. 

“Did you run here?” Viktor asks. 

Yuuri looks a little dazed for a moment before he nods. “I was scared,” he says. 

“I’m okay,” Viktor says. “We’re okay.”

Yuuri’s eyes flick up, suddenly, at that. So protective, his Yuuri.

“What did they say?” Viktor asks. “It was so quick, I couldn’t hear.”

Yuuri turns pink again. “Mom was mad that Dad didn’t tell her and Dad said she should have just asked,” he answers. “Mom’s really mad he didn’t tell her. Dad doesn’t get how she didn’t  _ know _ .” 

“Oh,” Viktor says. 

“We have to find you a doctor,” Yuuri says. 

“What about training?” Viktor asks. “You have a season and events. You have to be ready, Yuuri.”

“What about  _ you _ ?” Yuuri asks. 

“Don’t you want to bring me home a gold medal?” Viktor asks.    
“I want  _ you _ , healthy, more,” Yuuri answers, his voice cracking, ever so slightly. 

The very particular way the air smells scorched when Yuuri is upset does not help the nausea. Viktor holds on, though. 

“Hey!” A voice calls up the stairs. Mari. “Come downstairs!”

Viktor looks up, at Yuuri. “We’ve been summoned,” he says. 

Yuuri huffs. Nods. 

Viktor’s legs are asleep, and Yuuri seems sore. They both wobble a little, picking themselves up from the floor and hobbling down into the public part of the inn. 

Hiroko has a phonebook out, having a conversation on the phone. Mari places a cup of tea before both of them and wanders off toward the kitchen. Toshiya buses a nearby table, looking adequately embarrassed.

Hiroko hangs up the phone. 

“I called a doctor,” she says. “Be here soon.”

“The doctor?” Yuuri asks. 

She nods. 

“Thank you,” Viktor says. 

She smiles again. “How do you feel?” She asks. 

“Sick,” Viktor answers, honestly. 

“Drink your tea,” she replies. “It will help.” 

Yuuri smiles, ever so slightly, sitting across from Viktor. On the other side of him, Hiroko closes the phone book and gets up, heads back into the kitchen. 

“She’s going to cook you something,” Yuuri says. 

Viktor stifles an acidic belch. Takes a sip of grassy, green tea. It does not help the taste of vomit still clinging to his molars. 

“Doctors here still make housecalls?” Viktor asks.

Yuuri shrugs. “I guess mom found one,” he says. There’s a beat, before Yuuri murmurs, absently,  “Oh-- oh no.”

“What ‘oh no?’” Viktor says. “What’s wrong?”   
“They want you to have the-- have it  _ here _ ,” he groans. “There’s this stupid,  _ dangerous _ , family tradition,” he continues, his voice climbing up louder on  _ dangerous _ , “that we’re all born here. At the spring.”

“You were the first,” Viktor says. “Your sister told me. You were the first to be born in a hospital.”

Yuuri nods. 

“Your mother almost broke my fingers!” Toshiya says from the other side of the room. 

“She could have died!” Yuuri cries. “You could have died, with Mari!” Yuuri’s brown eyes are wild with anxiety. “What if-- what--”

Viktor reaches across the table and gently takes Yuuri’s hand into his. 

The words stop in Yuuri’s throat and he grasps Viktor’s hand tight. His lips press into a thin, stern line. He sighs. “And what about you?” Yuuri asks. “What if we don’t want to live here? What if we want to live somewhere else?” His voice falls quiet. 

There’s an awful, tense pause. 

“Oh,” Toshiya says. 

There’s a sudden, conspicuous silence from the kitchen. 

“You have been thinking a lot, my Yuuri,” Viktor says. 

Yuuri seems to shrink in on himself. 

“There’s so much to  _ do _ ,” Yuuri says, voice quiet. “I know you decided you wanted to coach instead of compete, but if coaching...Viktor, you’re so much more important than me.” 

_ “Yuuri, god damn it to hell _ ,” Viktor says, trying  his absolute hardest to stay calm. He takes a breath, and realizes what he said was in Russian. He takes another breath. 

“I will coach you,” Viktor says. “You will compete. You will bring me a gold medal and I will hang it where ever we live. Our perfect,  _ healthy _ child will be born safely. I will be healthy. You will compete. You are not quitting. Not until you are done. You are not done.”

“You have to go to the doctor,” Yuuri says. “You have to take care of yourself and let me take care of you--”

“I’m not your  _ property _ ,” Viktor exclaims, voice overloud. 

And Yuuri stops, startled. Shaken. He looks lost, for a moment. 

“I know,” he says, his voice soft. His eyes shift away from Viktor’s face, back to the grain of the table. “But I don’t think this will work. Things already changed.” Yuuri pauses, just a moment. It reads almost like a tremor. “I love you, Viktor. I can’t let you be hurt for me. I couldn’t live with myself.”

Viktor looks at Yuuri’s hand, wrapped into his own. Yuuri’s fingers and cuticles and fingertips. His skin. 

“I need to shower,” Viktor says. “Before the doctor gets here.”

He gets up, and steps away. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter makes up for like the six chapters of this where nothing happens have some plot all at once  
> holler at me on the twitter


	13. Chapter 13

Viktor is fourteen when he presents; he's fifteen when his parents stop talking to him. 

Or, rather, Viktor is fourteen when he presents. It’s a year later, laying in a hospital bed after a bad heat, when his parents stop talking to him. 

Viktor’s heat comes pretty regularly, every four months. His are short, which makes them easier to hide. The time off the ice is easily disguised as spending a week at a friend’s place, goofing off. He’s young enough still that he can deflect what journalists ask him about it and the neutral scent his deodorant leaves him with isn’t suspicious. Viktor’s managing to keep it from everyone, but most importantly, he’s keeping it from them. 

And it all goes pretty well until April, his first heat since his fifteenth birthday, when he doesn’t drink enough water and he winds up passing out and the cheap hotel he rents calls an ambulance on him when the cleaning people find him collapsed on the bathroom floor. 

Viktor wakes up in the hospital room, alone. It's a private room, in soft colors and soft light.

The doctor talks to him like Viktor doesn't know. Like this is his first heat. Like Viktor is still a  _ child _ . Like Viktor hasn't done this four times already. The doctor talks about being responsible and telling your guardians what's happening.

Viktor just nods. He knows from the tone of voice that his mother and father have been called. He knows from the lack of phone call, the loud absence of a message, the negative space of a non-existient visit that now they know, too. 

A million rubles disappear from Viktor's bank account, the one they opened for him, and when Viktor is discharged from the hospital a day later, everyone knows. 

Everyone knows.

Viktor goes to the rink, because, well, there’s nowhere else to go. 

It's Lilia who approaches him. Tall, sharp, cruel Lillia; preceded by the smell of cigarette smoke and and the stinging vapor of mentholated muscle balm. 

"It is not shameful," she says, "this thing that you are. But you must never let it stop you, and you must never let them tie you down."

Lilia helps him find a flat, and a little after that, a dog so he's less lonely. 

Viktor doesn't ask about how Lilia doesn't wear her wedding ring. He doesn't ask about how Yakov still does. 

Viktor never lets those three days, four times a year, stop him. He never lets it own him, either. And he does everything, everything he can, to keep it from defining him. 

Viktor tries not to remember the hospital as he runs a towel through his wet hair. He tries not to think about the photographs, the books, the stuffed animals, the clothes that he never got to go back for in his parents' house. Viktor tries not to remember the house he was a child in. Viktor tries not to remember his childhood. 

He combs his fingers through the wet locks and figures it'll just dry wavy today. He pulls on a sweater and a pair of slacks and he sits on the bed, his forearms rested on his knees. 

He doesn't know what to do. He wishes he did. 

_ Things have changed.  _

It rings in his ears. He can't stop thinking about it. 

Viktor hates it, when things change like this. 

He can do this. He can coach Yuuri, he can coach him to his gold medal. He can carry Yuuri's baby-- their baby-- and he can be back on the ice in a year. He can do this; he can do everything. He can; he always has. 

He has to. 

Viktor sits on the bed, and then he stands back up, but he gets too dizzy and falls back. He's not hungry, but he knows he should eat. 

He hates the doctor. 

It's almost harder, being in his room than being in a waitng room. He's not sure what to do. He feels like he should be cleaner, or like he should be getting ready, somehow. It's a tense, strung sort of feeling. 

Viktor clenches his hands into the sheets on the bed and he wishes he weren't mean, that he didn't have such a stubborn streak, that he could just let himself be kept, be happy. Viktor wishes he didn't push everyone away; first a string of much less worthy boyfriends and now, finally, the love of his life. 

Viktor wishes, like he wished when he was fifteen, that instead of himself he could be someone else. He wishes he could open the door and everything could be how it was.

But things have changed.

* * *

 

Yuuri stands behind the kitchen, by the receiving dock, in the cold air, terrified. Trying to figure out what he just did. What he just said. But the more he thinks about it, the more it slips out of his hands, becoming more and more unclear. The more Yuuri thinks about it, the more he finds himself caught on a track, in a loop over and over again.

Did he send Viktor away? 

Did he break whatever it was that was between them finally, once and for all?

Did he send Viktor away? 

Did he send Viktor away?

“Yuuri,” Mari says, behind him, sliding the door from the kitchen open, stepping outside.

She lights a cigarette, taking a long drag before letting it go.

She proffers the pack to Yuuri, who looks at it for a long moment before shaking his head.

She shrugs. 

“You gotta stop thinking so hard,” she says. “I can hear you all the way over here.”

“He’s going to leave me,” Yuuri blurts, before he can stop it. “I can’t live without him and he’s finally going to leave.”

“Fuck, Yuuri--” she says. 

“I finally did it. I made him not want to stay,” Yuuri continues. “And he’s never going to talk to me again and it’s going to be my fault. I love him. It’s my fault. He’s going to leave.”

“Hey, Yuuri, I need you to breathe for me,” she says, looking at him seriously. She ashes her cigarette and extinguishes it before tucking the rest behind her ear. “Yuuri, you gotta breathe.”

It’s familiar, how Mari’s breath comes and goes. Familiar watching her eyes, wavering with nervousness. Her hands heavy on his shoulders, her eyebrows drawn downward into a serious expression. It’s just like being a kid again; being caught outside before school, the cycling of it all getting him trapped and scared and suffering. Yuuri being trapped by his own stupid, stupid problems and Mari trying to help him slip out of it. 

Her wrists are so close to him, Yuuri can catch the leather and charcoal smell of her, the soft green smell of grass, the salt of the ocean. 

Family. 

Yuuri doesn’t realize he’s crying; he just cries. 

Viktor’s going to leave. Yuuri held him too close and now he’s leaving. 

“Yuuri,” Mari murmurs, and she pulls him into a hug.

Yuuri cries. He still can’t breathe, not really. But he cries. 

Mari lets him. 

“Why do you think he’s going to leave?” She says. “Why do you think he won’t be okay? Why do you just assume the worst, Yuuri?”

Yuuri can’t answer. He doesn’t know. He wishes he wouldn’t.

“You have to talk to him,” she says. “You won't fix anything not talking to him."

"He doesn't want me to," Yuuri says. "I pushed him away."

Mari doesn't say anything, though, she just holds him until the crying goes away and all that's left is the empty, static sort of feeling of having cried too much. 

She pulls away and pulls a grimace. 

"Go wash your face," she says. "You should be there when he talks to the doctor."

"He won't--"

"He won't want to talk to a doctor alone, Yuuri, why do you think he hasn't gone yet," she interrupts. "I have an important cigarette to finish; go solve your fucking problems."

Yuuri stares out at the view from the back for a moment. The trees reach up into the sky, the late winter flat against their naked branches. Soon, they'll bloom, but not quite yet.

He heads back inside and washes his face in the bathroom. The air is still sticky and humid from Viktor's shower. Yuuri feels a stab of guilt that he can't smell the winter and wood smell of Viktor. His own suppressant, he guesses.

Yuuri stands in front of his sink for a long minute, and he wonders what he's supposed to do next.

_ I'm not your property.  _

Yuuri wishes, wishes he could explain. He doesn't want to own Viktor. He doesn't think anyone could. 

Yuuri pulls out his phone. 

_ I don't want to own you _ , he types out.  _ I love you so much. I love you so much more than I have loved anyone else. I am so scared. It is more important to me that you be healthy and safe than I bring home a medal or that you give birth in the inn. It is more important to me that you be healthy and safe than we live together or be married or you be my coach. _

Yuuri types it all out, and looks at it for a long moment. 

There's a knock on the bathroom door. "Yuuri?" his mother calls. "The doctor is here. He has some questions for you and Vicchan."


	14. Chapter 14

The doctor is a small, hunched man with a large black bag, a stethoscope, and a white coat. He looks like a doctor, like a cartoon of a doctor that Viktor might have seen as a kid. It's sort of unreal, to see him totter into the room and sit down on a chair across from Viktor. He pulls his glasses off his face and cleans them on his shirt-- small half-moons. He blinks a couple of times and says something in Japanese that Viktor can't catch.

"I'm sorry?" Viktor asks, in his own Japanese.

The old man shakes his head. "How far along are you?" he asks.

Viktor swallows. "Almost two months," he answers.

The doctor nods. He opens up his bag and pulls out a pad of paper, starts making notes.

The bedroom door rasps as it opens.

Yuuri looks awful. He's washed his face, but his eyes are still red and puffy. He looks exhausted. Guilty.

The doctor turns. "Ah!" he says.

"Doctor Serizawa," Yuuri says, in English. "I didn't know you did house calls."

"Just for Katsuki Hiroko," the doctor answers in English. shaking his head. "Free soak in the hot spring."

Yuuri nods, huffs an embarrassed sounding laugh.

Viktor aches.

"Viktor," Yuuri asks, turning to him, "do you-- I can-- do you want me here?"

Viktor's mouth feels dry.

He nods.

Yuuri nods back and he steps into the room, closing the door behind him. He stands, distant from Viktor and the doctor. Present, but removed.

"Your first appointment?" The doctor asks.

Viktor nods.

The doctor nods back.

"Hmm," he tuts. He says something in fast Japanese, faster than Viktor can catch, his voice creaking around the words.

Viktor looks to Yuuri, instinctive.

"He wants you to come in for a more complete exam," Yuuri says, translating. He rubs his own stomach. "I don't know the English. LIke an xray? But he wants to take your blood pressure and listen to your heart and ask questions."

"Oh," Viktor says. He nods

The doctor's motions are gentle and practiced, and he writes everything down carefully. There's no conversation, just the soft sound of Viktor rearranging himself on the bed and the doctor manipulating his instruments. The stethoscope is cool against Viktor's chest, a little cooler than the doctor's hands as he holds Viktor's wrist to count the beats of his heart, the blood pressure cuffs tight around his bicep.

The doctor makes notes before he wipes his glasses clean on his shirt agan, says, "So far?"

Viktor takes a deep breath. He wishes it would make him feel better.

"I've had morning sickness," Viktor says. "All the time, though?"

He gestures, for vomiting.

The doctor nods. "Sleep?" he asks.

"I'm tired," Viktor says. "But I'm up all night."

The doctor nods. "Your first?" He asks.

Viktor nods.

God, he hates this.

The doctor says something. The only part Viktor catches is _family_.

"I'm sorry," Viktor says. "I don't--"

"He wants to know your family history," Yuuri says.

"Oh," Viktor says. "I don't know."

The doctor nods. He pulls out a pad of paper and writes something down before tearing the sheet off, handing it to Viktor. "For sickness," he says. "And sleeping."

Viktor nods. "Thank you," he says.

The doctor nods.

He stands up and sighs.

"Three days from now? In the afternoon," he says. "Come to my clinic."

He steps out of the door.

Yuuri watches him leave, and then he follows.

And Viktor's alone, again.

* * *

 

Yuuri follows Dr. Serizawa out of the room.

"Doctor," Yuuri says. "I have a few questions?"

Dr. Serizawa turns and looks at him. "Yes?" He asks.

Yuuri clears his throat. God, he wishes this were easier. He wishes he weren't fighting with Viktor. He wishes he knew how to talk about this.

"Viktor's my coach," Yuuri says. "And there's travel and training and--"

The doctor nods. "You're worried about his health?" He asks.

Yuuri nods.

The doctor sighs. "There's nothing on his basic vitals that seems worrisome. Intense sickness in the first trimester isn't normal, but it's not uncommon, and that exacerbating sleeplessness is also common. If the medication doesn't help, we'll look into more aggressive courses of action and resting. When he comes in for an ultrasound, we'll know even better."

Yuuri nods, again. "It's just-- pregnancy is so--it's so risky," he says. "And what if-- what if he gets hurt?"

"What if?" The doctor answers. "What if, what if. Katsuki Yuuri, always caught up on his what-ifs. Relax. Trust him. Make sure he goes to his appointments and listens to his body and the doctor. But you have to relax. He knows, and he knows better than you do."

Yuuri looks at the doctor. He bites his lip, trying to find the right thing he could say.

"What if I lose him?" Yuuri asks.

"What if?" the doctor repeats, and he leaves Yuuri standing in the hall.

Yuuri sinks down to the floor, his back against the wall.

Yuuri takes a deep breath.

Viktor opens his door and steps out into the hallway.

He looks at Yuuri.

There's something wounded and unfamiliar in his blue eyes, something so sad Yuuri can barely stand it. He's only about ten feet away, close enough. Far enough.

Viktor steps back into the room and closes the door.

Yuuri rests his head on his knees for a moment before he stands up and knocks on Viktor's door.

"What," Viktor says, from the other side of the door.

"Your prescription," Yuuri says. His hand levitates over the door, itching to touch it. Itching to reach out. "I can go fill it. Or you can or-- we can or--"

VIktor opens the door.

"Your prescription," Yuuri murmurs.

Viktor doesn't look wounded. He looks tired, and angry.

Viktor takes a deep breath, runs a hand over his face.

"I can get it," he says. "I'm just tired. I've had a _shitty_ day."

Yuuri nods. It's an automatic reflex.

Even through the pill that dampens the world around him, Yuuri can smell how scorched and acrid Viktor's distress is.

"I-- I'm sorry," he says. His voice feels so quiet. He feels so stupid. "I'm sorry."

Viktor doesn't move. He doesn't shut his door or say anything. He just stands there.

"I've been so scared, for weeks," he continues. "And it's more important to me that you be healthy and safe than-- that I have any kind of medal or-- or a baby. And if that means--" Yuuri feels his voice crack and creak. "If that means leaving me, so you can take care of yourself, then you should leave me." His breath catches on something inside himself. It gets harder and harder to take it in. To let it loose. "I never wanted to own you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Viktor. I'm so sorry."

Viktor stands there, in the room.

Yuuri feels naked before him.

"You have to listen to me," Viktor says.

His voice is soft. Firm, but barely louder than a murmur. Secret between them.

"You have to listen to me, Yuuri," he repeats. "I _know_ we can do this. I'm sure. But I can't be sure for both of us. I need you to trust me."

Yuuri nods. He feels so stupid.

"I need you to trust me," Viktor says.There's a motion, of him stepping into Yuuri's line of sight, of him looking at Yuuri from underneath. He looks so sad. "I'm sorry I scared you," he says.

"I can't _lose_ you," Yuuri manages, before his hands creep up to cover his mouth, to claw at his mouth, to hold back the awful, keening sob that threatens to fall out of him.

Yuuri's eyes wrench shut. He feels his own hand, as if disconnected from his body, creep up to cover one of his eyes, to wipe away the ugly tears.

Viktor doesn't say anything, but Yuuri does feel him reach forward and grip his arms. His thumbs soothe and worry at the sides of his biceps.

"It's been too long," VIktor says. "I've been alone too long, and I forget."

Yuuri wishes he could just stop crying. He knows Viktor must hate it as much as he does.

"I'm sorry I scared you, my Yuuri," Viktor says. "I forgot that this could hurt you, too. I was too long alone, and I forgot how other people get hurt."

Viktor is careful and slow as he pulls Yuuri into his arms. His broad chest warm and solid against Yuuri. His shoulders firm.

Yuuri cries, and Viktor lets him.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE note the tags; heavy stuff happens in the next couple of chapters.

Yuuri's nervous; Viktor can tell. 

It doesn't take a lot for Viktor to figure it out. To figure him out. Viktor knows Yuuri as well as he knows his own skin, his own voice. Viktor reads the way Yuuri tensely focuses on his phone, the way he pulls his bottom lip under his teeth, the way he doesn't hear. 

Yuuri's nervous, which is good, because it means he's not focusing on Viktor.

It's mid-March, which means it's been a little over four months and it's been--

Things have changed. 

"Yuuri," Viktor says, standing in their hotel room. "Take a breath."

Yuuri looks up from his phone, over at Viktor. He blinks a couple times, swallows. He nods. "Sorry," he says. "Sorry." He puts his phone on the television console, face down. 

Practice tomorrow. Programs start day after. They landed a couple hours ago and just made it into the hotel. 

"You should call Mari and let them know you made it safe," Viktor says. 

Yuuri huffs a short laugh, just a little. "Yeah," he says. "Yes." He looks up at Viktor, his brown eyes wide, a small smile over his face. "I'm obvious, aren't I?" 

Viktor laughs. "Yes, my love," he says. 

Yuuri nods. "Can you call? I want to take a shower."

"Of course," Viktor says. "Leave out my toiletries?"

Yuuri nods and unzips the luggage. Viktor fishes out his own phone. 

The line rings a few times, before Mari grunts into the line. 

"We're here," Viktor says. 

Mari grunts again and hangs up. 

Viktor tosses his phone on the bed. The shower turns on. 

Viktor sits down on the bed and unbuttons his trousers and lays back down. He sighs heavily. 

He needs to get new pants-- ones that accomodate his growing belly. He needs new shirts and a new coat-- he needs new clothes. He's bigger, bigger than he's ever been in his life and if Doctor Serizawa is to be believed, he'll only get bigger. The medication for nausea worked, and instead of getting thinner and sharper, there's a softness to his hips, to his thighs, to his belly that's never been there before. Things are tighter. The feeling is alien. 

Viktor strokes his hand over his belly and he takes a deep breath, as deep as he can manage. He lets his hand drift downward, over the slop of his stomach, over the waistband of his pants, of his boxers. 

Viktor sits back up and pulls off his shirt, his trousers. He grabs his shirt and sweats and sets them aside; he'll shower once Yuuri is out. 

Viktor's hand stays over the warm flesh of his stomach. 

There's a knock on the door. "One moment!" Viktor calls, pulling on the sweats and a loose jacket. 

"It's just me!" A voice on the other side calls, and Viktor opens the door and--

"Oh!" He says. "Yurio!"

Yurio looks exhausted in the doorway, heavy bags under his eyes, his hair greasy. 

"Let me in," he hisses. 

Viktor steps away from the door and Yurio slouches in, settling into an armchair in a corner.

He looks at Viktor from behind his hay-blonde bangs, his eyes green and sharp. His eyes flick up and down him, and he says, "No one's saying you're pregnant. Everyone just thinks you're getting fat."

Viktor smiles. "How nice to see you too, my friend Yurio. How was your trip? You look well. Have you grown taller?"

"I look like hammered shit," Yurio says. "The train ride was a nightmare without end and yes, I'm taller-- don't fucking ask me about it, you're worse than the vultures."

The shower turns off. 

"Yurio's here," Viktor calls, loud enough that Yuuri can hear him in the bathroom.

There's a pause, weighty. "Okay," Yuuri answers. 

"When are you going to tell everyone?" Yurio asks.

Viktor shrugs. He sits down on the bed. He pulls off the jacket-- he's hot. That's part of it all-- he's always hot and out of breath and never quite on balance. He looks over at Yurio. 

"Never? When the baby has graduated college?" He says. 

Yurio snorts. "Fat chance," he says. "This isn't something you can hide, if you want to keep coming to his competitions. And after-- who will watch the baby when you are at the rink? And what about nursing?"

"I know-- we-- I know," Viktor says. "I know. It's just hard to--" He wraps his arms around his middle. 

The bathroom door opens. Yuuri's hair is wet; he's wearing the clothes he wore on the plane. His skin has the damp, oily kind of look of when he just put on his moisturizer (the one Viktor picked out for him at the department store, more than a month ago).

"Hello Yurio," Yuuri says. "Are you excited to compete?"

"Viktor told me in Barcelona," he says. 

Yuuri turns off the bathroom light. He nods. 

"They're already talking," Yurio says. 

Yuuri's fist clenches. He looks at the carpet.

Yuuri's phone is face down on the television console. 

_ Oh _ .

"They've always talked," Viktor says. "I don't care.”

Yuuri doesn’t say anything. Yurio scoffs. 

“You have to know  _ now _ what you’re going to say,” Yurio says. “Is it Yuuri’s cooking? Is it retirement? People are going to talk.”

“I won’t say anything,” Viktor says. 

Yuuri looks at him. He nods. 

“We won’t comment,” Yuuri says. 

“What about in May? Or August?” Yurio says. “What about when Yuuri takes time off? There’s going to be questions. You can’t just pretend like it’s not happening-- like you’re not  _ public _ . People know who you are. People are going to know. You can’t just not  _ say _ anything.”

“It’s Viktor’s decision,” Yuuri says. 

Yurio rolls his eyes, theatrical. “Is Viktor reading what they’re saying?”

“ _ It’s Viktor’s decision,”  _  Yuuri repeats, and there’s an edge to it. A growl.

Yuuri’s shoulders are raised up around his ears,his eyebrows pulled down tight and angry. 

“I’m not your enemy!” Yurio shouts. “Don’t go all big  _ alpha _ on me!”

“Yuuri,” Viktor says.”Take a deep breath.”

Yuuri’s hands are clenched into tight fists. He takes a deep breath. His eyes close. His jaw is clenched. He takes a deep breath and holds it for a moment, before he exhales, long and slow. 

“I know you care about us,” Viktor says, to Yurio. “But we’ve been thinking about this. We know.  _ I _ know. I know. Don’t worry about me. Worry about Yuuri taking gold.”

Yurio gets up from the chair. He looks sour. 

“You’re both so fucking stupid,” he mutters and he slouches back out of the room. 

Viktor watches him go, watches their door close, watches the handle slip closed.

He stands up and pulls Yuuri into his arms, and Yuuri melts. He wraps his arms around Viktor, his shoulders easing, his nose finding the space beside Viktor’s neck, where Viktor’s scent is strongest. 

“It’s your decision,” Yuuri says. “Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

Viktor can feel Yuuri’s anxiety. He can feel his breath. He can feel the way he shakes, just a little, in Viktor’s grasp. 

Yuuri holds him tight, and Viktor can feel his terrible, shivering need to protect him. 

“It’s okay,” Viktor says. “Whatever it is, it’s okay.”

Yuuri nods against his neck. 

Tomorrow is coming. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry it's been a metric eternity since last i updated; i've gotten elbow deep in a few projects that will be posting later this year, and writing across those and into my WIPS-- i have only so many words in me in a day, it turns out, and working a little bit on everything is a different efficiency than working all at once on one thing. still though: i have thought big thoughts about where this is going and what it is.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter kind of handles some body stuff; the next few will too. tread with caution.

Viktor is bigger.

Yuuri remembers the season after his first Grand Prix as a special kind of hell. He remembers the enveloping, terrible  _ sea _ of it. He remembers the chasing, trembling, rapid panic and terror of it. Yuuri remembers the season, and he remembers coming home,  _ bigger _ and  _ hideous _ like he remembers the sound of chipping his front teeth on the ice. Yuuri remembers. It was agony. It was hell. 

Viktor is bigger, and newspapers and gossip blogs and sports sites and fan twitters and-- everyone’s noticed. Not just Yuuri’s ballet teacher and his childhood friend and his mother and father.  _ Everyone  _ is looking at Viktor, and everyone seems to have something to say about him being bigger. 

Yuuri turns fast, buzzing spins on the ice. He races from rink edge to rink edge, trying to pace his way out of the way the thought is consuming him.

Yuuri wishes Viktor had let him retire. 

He launches himself into a jump. 

Yuuri wishes that this could be  _ private _ . Just between the two of them. He wishes people wouldn’t look, he wishes they wouldn’t say anything. He wishes he could fold Viktor fully into the space of his chest and hide him away. 

Yuuri lands. He pulls into some footwork practice, turning in that curious, dancing, bouncing away across the ice. He’s not thinking about rhythm or timing; he’s trying to hear and follow the instinct written into his body, keeping the code and muscle memory fresh. 

Viktor is  _ bigger _ . Not as big as he’s going to be, but there’s a little more...more of him. Heaviness across his stomach. Fullness in his face. Softness where before, there were angles. Viktor is bigger.

Yuuri’s heart races.  He sprints from one edge to the other and back and back and back.

“Katsuki!” Someone calls from the wall. Yuuri looks up, stops.

Yakov is there. He’s beet red to the bald pate of his scalp, frowning intently. 

Yuuri skates to the wall, standing in front of it. “Sir?” He asks.

Yakov says something in clipped, brisk Russian, before he shakes his head. “You hurt yourself, doing this,” he says. “Worse than Yuri, you are. Go stretch. Come back with Vitya.”

Yuuri looks down. Nods. He doesn’t like to wake Viktor. The doctor said sleep is good for their baby. It’s become more common now, for Yuuri to wake up before Viktor, to begin the day with Viktor still in bed. 

He steps off the ice and heads back to the locker rooms. Slides into shoes and his jacket and heads out, past the press and to a taxi where he rides back to the hotel.

Yuuri goes up in the elevator back to their hotel room and he waits in front of the door, for just a moment. 

Yuuri still can’t really believe, even now, that Viktor is behind that door.

He lets his hand rest on the doorknob, security key in his hand. He looks at the door. At the room.

Yuuri opens the door and steps inside. The door hisses slowly shut. The early morning light is finally beginning to filter through the window. It’s grey, soft, and bright. It travels over the shape of Viktor in bed, his back to the door, his hairline fanned barely visible against the nape of his slender neck. 

Yuuri hangs his bag on the back of the door. Slides out of his shoes and toes slowly across the room before he settles back onto the bed.

Yuuri looks at the curve of Viktor’s skull, right where the bottom edge of it nestles into the top of his neck. 

Yuuri turned his phone off hours ago. It’s the only thing to keep him sane. 

Yuuri lets his hand slip forward, over Viktor’s stomach. Different, than it was. 

Yuuri lets his eyes drift closed. He takes a deep breath, in and out. 

Lets this be private, between them, just for a moment more.

Viktor shifts against him after a moment. There’s the hitch to his breath that means he’s woken up, and the stretch and pull of his body as he wakes a little.

Drowsy, he nests his own hand into Yuuri’s. Pulls his fingers up to his mouth, kisses them. 

“Don’ practice without me,” Viktor murmurs, his voice heavy and sweet. 

Yuuri leans forward and kisses his bare shoulder. He inhales, long and slow, the winter and trees smell of Viktor. 

“Yes, Vitya,” Yuuri answers. 

“And don’t go to breakfast without me either,” Viktor says. 

“Yes, Vitya,” Yuuri answers. 

Yuuri feels Viktor’s fingers stroke over his own. 

“Yuuri, stay here with me,” he murmurs.

“Yes, Vitya,” Yuuri answers.

He feels his own fingers slip easily into Viktor’s mouth. He feels Viktor’s wet tongue, his warm lips, the slippery feeling of him licking him, the hard, strange texture of his teeth. 

Viktor sucks on Yuuri’s fingers, getting him  _ soaked _ down to his palm. Yuuri groans. 

“ _ Yuuri _ ,” Viktor whines. 

Yuuri kisses Viktor’s shoulder, Viktor’s neck. He bites Viktor’s earlobe; Viktor hisses. Yuuri licks the shell of his his ear, feels Viktor slide their hands together down the swelling, bigger, softer shape of Viktor’s body, down to his cock, between his legs. 

Yuuri’s wet fingers slip easily to Viktor’s hole. Viktor is already wet.

Fuck the competition; Yuuri’s never going to leave this bed.

“Yes,” Viktor moans. “--Yuuri!” 

Yuuri, hard, grinds against Viktor, the bedsheets and his own clothes between them. 

Viktor’s breath catches on the air. He says something in slurred Russian; Yuuri can’t catch it. 

Yuuri’s finger slips  _ up _ and  _ into _ Viktor, just so, and Viktor tenses and startles and  _ gasps _ . 

“You’re beautiful,” Yuuri murmurs. “Just like that Viktor, come on.” His hand is cramping, reaching around and into him, to stroke inside him just right. 

“Come, Viktor,” Yuuri says. “Please, for me.”

Viktor’s breath is heavy in the room. Yuuri feels the smear of his own spit against his chin and neck where he ruts up against Viktor, the place where he bit and licked now rubbing back against him. 

Viktor tenses. He seizes, his body squeezing tight against Yuuri’s fingers, his weight thrown against Yuuri’s chest and hips. 

Viktor comes, panting in the hotel room. 

Yuuri pulls his fingers out of Viktor. Viktor huffs and pants. 

They stay close to each other. 

“Don’t go to practice without me,” Viktor says again. 

“Yes, Vitya,” Yuuri answers.

Viktor turns over, in bed. His face is flushed, sweating a little. His bangs are caught sweaty to his forehead. 

“We’re in this together,” Viktor says. “All of this.”   
Yuuri nods. He leans forward and kisses Viktor softly, on the mouth. 

“You need your rest,” Yuuri says. 

“Together,” Viktor repeats.

Yuuri nods, again. “Yes, Vitya,” he says. 

Viktor takes a deep breath. Blinks his blue eyes lazily, looking across the distance at Yuuri. 

“Help me shower,” Viktor says.

Yuuri nods. 

  
  



End file.
